


The Hobbit Prince, The Dwarf King, and the Two Paupers

by TheGlassFloor



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - The Prince and the Pauper, Bofur is a Sweetheart, Crackfic written with sincerity, Fluff, M/M, Romance, Romantic Thorin, shameless sentimentality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-05-31 16:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6477802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGlassFloor/pseuds/TheGlassFloor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Prince of the Shire looks miraculously identical to a pauper named Bilbo Baggins.  When the Prince goes missing a week before his arranged marriage to Thorin Oakenshield, the Prince's servant Bofur convinces Bilbo to take his place...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What Grace is Given

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so this story belongs squarely in crackfic territory. I've taken plenty of liberties with the characters and settings of The Hobbit. For one thing, the Shire is a kingdom in this AU, and the distance between the Shire and Erebor is much shorter than we otherwise know it to be, with pretty much only Mirkwood and some open country in between.
> 
> Also, these first couple of chapters mostly focus on Bofur and his friendship with the Prince of the Shire. Bilbo is introduced, and Thorin is mentioned. Thorin shows up in chapter 3, and his and Bilbo's part of the story kicks into gear in chapter 4. But don't skip the first 3 chapters--they're important too!
> 
> Hope you enjoy. :)

Once upon a time, in the Middle-earth kingdom known as the Shire, an extraordinary event occurred: two baby boy hobbits were born at the exact same moment, but to different parents.  The King and Queen were overjoyed at the birth of their son, the darling Prince.  Equally ecstatic were the two peasant hobbits at the arrival of their own precious son, who they named Bilbo.

Bungo and Belladonna Baggins, as the two peasants were named, lived on the outskirts of the kingdom.  They loved their little Bilbo with all their hearts, and they worried: How could they expect to take care of a child, keep him fed, clothed, and happy when they were so poor?

Bungo Baggins believed he knew a way.  His distant relative, Lobelia, owned a dress shop in town, and she seemed to do fairly well for herself.  He had never approached her for any kind of help before, but now, it seemed, was the time to do so.

Years passed and the two young hobbits grew and came of age.  The King died, leaving the widowed Queen to rule the Shire alone with the Prince as her only heir.  Both of Bilbo’s parents also passed away, leaving the remainder of their debt to Lobelia to fall to him.  He worked for her in her store, which she had expanded from a dress shop to a store that sold all kinds of clothing to better compete with other businesses that had sprung up in town over the years.

The Shire Prince and the pauper Bilbo Baggins lived their lives completely unaware of each other.  No one had any idea that the two of them looked miraculously, inexplicably identical.

* * *

The kingdom was in trouble, or it would be soon.

There was a gold mine, the only one in all of the Shire, situated within the hills at the edge of the Shire’s farmlands near the Eastfarthing Woods, and it was the main source of the kingdom’s prosperity.  The Queen’s miners had informed her that the gold would only last a few more years, and she had heeded their warnings, but then the gold ran out sooner than expected.  Normally she would have consulted her adviser, a dwarf named Onar, on such a dire issue, but he was away on a long journey.  He seemed to spend time away from the Shire quite often, which made sense, as he was also the kingdom’s ambassador to the dwarves of the Blue Mountains and elsewhere.  Hobbit and Dwarvish society had become more integrated over the last few generations, and that trend would continue.  Pondering thus, the Queen came to an idea: She had heard that Thorin Oakenshield, the Dwarf King of Erebor, was looking for a spouse, someone to be his royal consort.  Erebor was legendary for its hoard of gold and treasure.  Should Thorin choose to marry her son, the two kingdoms would be united and the Shire-folk would never have to worry about their financial security again.

The plan was a sound one.  The Queen sent messengers to Erebor immediately extending an invitation to the King.

She never asked her son’s opinion on the matter because she already knew what it would be.  Instead she empathized with the Prince and tried to reassure him.

“I’m sorry, my darling,” she said feelingly.  “I know that marrying a stranger may not have been what you envisioned for your fate, but you must understand: We have a duty to take care of our people.  I would not ask this of you if not for the fact that there seems to be no other choice.”

“I understand, Mother.”

* * *

“What?!” Onar raged.  “Making a decision without me?  Who does she think she is?”

“Uh...the Queen?” ventured one of Onar’s lackeys, a dwarf named Vigg.

Onar grabbed him by the collar, his large nostrils flaring, always quick to take his anger out on anyone.  “You simpering simpleton!”

“Well, she  _ is _ the Queen,” Vigg said, flinching only slightly.  “She’s got a crown and sceptre and sits in her big, fancy chair, and--”

“Silence, you imbecile!”  He gave Vigg a shove, making him stumble backwards into Vindal, Onar’s other lackey.

He was determined not to let his plans be thwarted that easily.  Onar knew, as did Vigg and Vindal but no one else, that the royal mine had run out of gold earlier than expected because the two of them had been helping Onar pilfer large amounts of it and hide it away for the last several years.  He melted all of it down and cast it into coins (something he was well skilled at doing from all the years he’d spent working in forges before entering the good graces of the Shire’s royal family) and had it all stored in banks in the Blue Mountains.

Little by little he had gotten rich this way, but being rich wasn’t enough, not for Onar.  He wanted to rule, to be the dwarf who would go down in history for taking over the kingdom of hobbits.

When the time came that the royal mine ran out of gold, he would have revealed his cache of treasure to the Queen, said he amassed his wealth over several years by making smart investments and business deals with the various Dwarven kingdoms over the years, and spun it as if he were doing the Shire a favor by asking the Queen for the Prince’s hand in marriage, thus procuring his position of future King of the Shire. (Actually King’s consort, but why quibble about such things?)

Little did he expect that the Queen would get someone even richer than he was to fill that position before he could even get back from his latest “ambassador’s journey”.

“They say that King Thorin is due to arrive in a few days,” Vindal said, pushing Vigg off of him.  “The hobbits have even planned a festival for tomorrow in anticipation of the upcoming royal wedding.”

Onar rolled his eyes.  Those silly Shire-folk, of  _ course  _ they would be having a festival.  He stroked his graying beard and hummed to himself.  Perhaps there was still a way to carry through with his plans.

“Vigg...Vindal...what do you think Thorin would do if he arrived here in our kingdom, only to find that the Prince was gone?  How patient would he be?  How long would he wait for the Prince to return before giving up and leaving and going back to Erebor?”

The two younger dwarves looked at each other, then back at their master, not quite grasping whatever he was suggesting.

“And what do you think the Queen would do,” he went on, “if I, her loyal adviser, were the one to ‘find’ the Prince, and rescue him from whatever peril he had found himself in?”

Onar wore a wicked grin, which Vigg and Vindal mirrored as realization dawned on them.

* * *

“You make it looks so easy,” Lotho said.

“Because it is easy,” Bilbo encouraged.  “Here, try it like this.”  He repeated the exact same dance steps he’d performed in front of Lotho five times already: a couple of quick steps, a couple of quick hops, ankles crossing, a couple of kicks, followed by one grand final spin.

Lotho tried once again to mimic Bilbo’s movements, and at least this time he got through all of them without accidentally skipping any of them, but his dancing still ended up looking quite clumsy in comparison to Bilbo’s.

“That was a little better.  Just practice it a few more times and you’re sure to impress everybody at the festival tomorrow.”

Lotho shook his head.  “Nobody will be impressed by how I do it after they see you doing it.”

Bilbo shrugged.  “Then I won’t use it.  I’ll leave that one to you and let everyone think you came up with it on your own.”  He smiled and winked at Lotho, and the two of them shared a good-natured laugh.

“Excuse me,” came Lobelia’s voice from above, “I’m not sure what you’re doing, but it doesn’t look like working.”

They were inside of Lobelia’s store, where Bilbo had been utilizing some of the open floor space to show Lobelia’s son Lotho a few pointers on dancing.  She descended the wooden staircase that connected the store to their bedrooms on the second floor, scowling at the two of them.

“It’s all right, Mum,” Lotho said.  “We were just taking a break.”

“I told you, Lotho,  _ you _ are allowed to take breaks if you feel tired.  But I doubt you feel very tired if you have the energy to hop and skip about.  And anyway, last I checked, this is a clothing store, not a dance studio.”

“From the look of things, I would have thought it was a debtor’s prison,” Bilbo remarked wryly.

Lotho stared down at the floorboards, keeping his hands clasped behind his back.  He always worried what his mother would do whenever Bilbo was bold enough to sass her that way.

“That’s right, keep laughing, keep making jokes,” Lobelia said to Bilbo with a sneer.  “You’ll need to keep your spirits up if you’re to have any hope of getting through the next ten years of working for me to pay back what I’m still owed.”

“What?” Bilbo practically barked with indignation.  “But I’ve already paid off most of it.  I can’t possibly still owe you that much!”

“Oh, but you do.  Interest, remember?  Maybe your parents should have thought of that before they borrowed so much.”

Bilbo felt his face grow hot at this low blow.  He struggled to conceal his anger, coupled with the still-lingering grief of having lost both of his parents.

“They did it to feed me,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Lobelia shrugged.  “Their mistake.  Now, back to work,” she ordered, pointing a finger at the door in the rear of the shop that led to the supply room.  Bilbo silently complied, and Lotho began to follow him until Lobelia stopped him: “Lotho, dear, go to the kitchen and make me some tea.  That’s a good lad.”

* * *

Bofur was not the only dwarf working in the palace, but the way he had come to be there was rather unique.

It had been an ordinary day, just like any other, when the young dwarf with thick braids sticking out beneath that ridiculous fur hat and that long, curvy mustache went right up to the palace gates with his assortment of handmade toys, asking if anyone inside would be interested in buying any.  The Prince just happened to be walking in the garden nearby, and before the guards could shoo the dwarf away, he invited Bofur to join him in the garden and sit on the stone bench near the rose bushes.  They settled easily into a casual, comfortable conversation, and the Prince was interested in knowing why Bofur was travelling around peddling toys.  He said that what little money he made at his craft he mostly sent home to his family in the Blue Mountains.  The Prince assumed at first that by “his family” he meant his wife and children, but he actually meant his brother’s children, whom he loved dearly.  Bofur was single and had no children of his own.

The Prince took an immediate liking to Bofur, and managed to convince his mother to hire the dwarf as a member of the palace staff, mostly as the Prince’s personal servant, but in a generic capacity as well.  It occurred to Bofur that the Prince may have invented a position for him just so he could be hired for it, and for that he was grateful.

Ever since then Bofur had presented himself differently: more appropriately for the palace, with his brown hair tied back in a ponytail and no hat, a simple white shirt with a sky blue waistcoat, dark blue breeches, stockings, and slim leather shoes; much more delicate than the thick boots he would wear outside of the palace grounds.  His mustache was the only part of his signature look that he kept.

Everyone was fond of Bofur, for he never lost his kind, humble attitude.  If, for example, he just so happened to absentmindedly run his hand along the surface of a table in passing, as he did presently one afternoon while walking through the palace looking for the Prince, it wasn’t to criticize the maid whose job it was to dust it, but to see if she needed help.

Bofur found the Prince sitting at the desk in his bedchamber, with a stack of books from the palace library piled on top of it.  The door was open, so he stepped in.

A book sat open on the surface of the desk, but the Prince’s attention was elsewhere.  He sat gazing out the open window with his chin resting on the heel of his hand, his expression listless.  The natural light spilled in and gently illuminated his features, a sight which Bofur found quite pleasing to the eye.

“You all right, Love?” said the dwarf, startling the Prince out of his trance.

“Oh!  Hello, Bofur,” he replied.  “Yes, I’m fine.”

* * *

“Love”, that’s what Bofur always called him.  He certainly didn’t mind, and was glad he’d broken the dwarf’s habit of calling him “Your Highness”.  “Love” had been the nickname he used for almost everyone at one time or another, particularly all the lasses who worked around the palace.  Usually it was used in the context of, “Do you need help with that, Love?”

It seemed like Bofur was always willing to help anyone, with anything.  Whether it was the maids with their housekeeping duties, the cooks in the kitchen, or the gardeners out on the palace lawn, Bofur could usually be counted on to offer to lend a hand.

Observing this, the Prince brought it up once and asked him why.  Was he worried that the Queen would think he wasn’t needed on her staff if he wasn’t always seen doing something productive, and toss him out?  The Prince assured him that this would never happen.

“Durin’s beard, no.  I just remember what it was like to have to work hard, always feelin’ like nobody cared about your troubles,” Bofur explained.  “When it was me and Bombur, his wife, and children, we always struggled to find work, and we kept to ourselves; we couldn’t help anybody else.  Well, that changed when I met you and you got the Queen to hire me.  I still send all my money home to them, but now I can use my time to help others.  And it’s not because the other servants aren’t competent enough to do their own jobs, we all just have difficulties from time to time and occasionally we fall behind.  Like the other day when Laura still had so much brass left to polish and I helped her catch up.”

The Prince regarded Bofur wordlessly for a few moments.

“It’s all because of you, really,” Bofur said with a shrug.  “You were my inspiration.  Because you helped me, I want to put that spirit of help out into the world and spread it around.  The way I see it, we only have one life on Arda, and I believe it’s in our nature to take care of each other.  Why else...What’s wrong?”

Without him realizing it, the Prince’s hand had slowly migrated up to his face until it was covering the lower half of it.  He blinked his eyes rapidly a few times to banish the misty quality they had suddenly adopted.

“Nothing,” he said, lowering his hand.  “I just...I…”

He had no words.  He didn’t know how to express what he was thinking and feeling; so he put his arms around Bofur’s strong shoulders and held him close.

For a brief moment, the Prince wondered if maybe he had overstepped some boundary, but then Bofur’s arms moved up and around and he returned the hug.

After that day, Bofur never called anybody “Love” except the Prince.

* * *

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Yes.  I was studying.”  He glanced down at the open book in front of him, then back up at Bofur.  “Reading about Gondorian history.”

Bofur sat on the edge of the Prince’s desk and gently brushed a stray hair out of his face.  That was one thing about the Prince that always stood out: his hair.  It was straight rather than curly like most hobbits had, and he always kept it combed straight back so that it covered the nape of his neck.  He often tucked it behind his ears, making them seem to stick out quite a bit, but most people thought it looked endearing.  His hair was dark brown in color, and it always had a shiny, wet look to it.

“Anythin’ you want to talk about?”

The Prince shook his head.  “No.”

Bofur gave him a kind smile and a knowing look.  He knew by now that the Prince always pretended to be studying when something was bothering him.

He sighed and went back to staring out the window.  “Oh, it’s everything.  The wedding is next week, and I spent over an hour with the wedding planner and my mother this morning just deciding what I’m going to wear.  And did you know that there’s a street festival going on in town right now?  A pity I’m not permitted to attend, considering I’m one of the two people it’s meant to honor.”

“Well...why should that stop you?”

He blinked and gave the dwarf a questioning look.

Bofur put his hand on the Prince’s shoulder, and with a twinkle in his eye said, “Get your cloak, the one with the hood, and meet me out at the stables in ten minutes.”


	2. A Chance Meeting

The festival was like nothing else the Prince had ever experienced.  There were games, stands selling party food, pony rides for the youngsters, laughter, cheer, and an overall feeling of merriment, all happening under a large banner strung across from one side of the street to the other which read: “Welcome to the Shire, King Thorin”.  The upbeat music played by the band was completely different than anything ever heard at the formal, elegant affairs held at the palace.  The Prince was grateful to be able to get away and forget who he was, even if only for a short while.  Better still, nobody else knew who he was either, other than Bofur, of course.  Still, he kept the hood of his cloak up and over his head just in case.

After helping themselves to hot, crispy, delicious pieces of fried fish and chips (which the Prince was shocked to find out were meant to be eaten with one’s hands and not utensils), he decided he’d like to try his hand at one of the games.  Throwing a ball to try to knock down a stack of bottles for a prize sounded easy enough, but it took him a few tries and cost him a few coins before he ultimately succeeded in toppling the whole stack, thus setting off an eruption of cheers and hurrahs from a small crowd that had gathered behind them to watch.  He selected a stuffed dragon as his prize, and proceeded to immediately hand it off to a little hobbit girl who had been standing off to the side.  The way her face lit up at the gift made both his and Bofur’s hearts melt.

“What do you say, Primula?” said her mother.

“Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!” she cried, hugging the toy close and jumping up and down excitedly.

_ Giving as always, _ Bofur thought as the little one scampered off.  Turning to the Prince, he said, “Well, looks like all those times we tossed the ball around on the lawn really paid off!”

“I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun.  Thank you so much for bringing me here, Bofur.”

He smiled fondly.  “Anythin, for you, Love.  Say, I don’t know about you, but I could go for an ale.  How about it?”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“Aye, comin’ right up.”

He went off to fetch them while the Prince moved curiously in the direction of a crowd of hobbits near the band that seemed to have gathered around one hobbit who looked to be creating quite the spectacle with his dancing.  He wedged his way through to get a better look, and what he saw shocked him.

Could it be.  Was he dreaming?  Was this even  _ possible _ ?

The dancing hobbit’s face looked  _ exactly _ like the Prince’s.

The crowd clapped in time with the music; the same rhythm the dancer was moving expertly to, all the while wearing a grin of absolute glee.  The Prince could tell he was really enjoying himself.

The jollity was suddenly broken when a hand appeared out of the crowd and grabbed the dancer by the ear, causing him to yelp in pain and the crowd to let out a collective gasp.  A middle-aged, ill-tempered-looking hobbit woman pulled the Prince’s lookalike away from the festivities in this way, snarling, “Did I tell you you could leave the store?”

* * *

“Let go of me!” Bilbo demanded.

Lobelia did let go, but then grabbed him by the arm instead and continued to try to herd him along the street and away from the crowds no matter how much he resisted.

“Nobody is even shopping today!” Bilbo protested.  “Everybody is at the festival!”

“Just because there are no customers doesn’t mean there isn’t still plenty of work to do.  Dwarves are going to be flooding into the kingdom over the next few days and I need you and Lotho to make more clothing in bigger sizes.”

“Enough!” Bilbo shouted, bringing himself and Lobelia to a halt and wrenching his arm free.  “You can’t treat me like this!  Just because I owe you money doesn’t mean you own me!  I’m not your slave!”

Lobelia’s eyes narrowed and she placed her hands on her hips.  “You know what?  You’re absolutely right.”  Her voice took on a quiet, cool, sinister tone.  “Go off and be free, if you must.  Go and find a job somewhere else, for all the skills that you have, rent your own room, pay your own way through life.  But you will still owe me, on top of your own expenses, and you know how debtors are dealt with in this kingdom.  If you are so adamant about leaving your worktable at the place where you have had your room and board granted to you all these years and being hounded day and night by collectors instead--at best--then so be it.”

Bilbo's ears burned with humiliation, defeat, and resentment for the detestable person standing in front of him.  He brushed past her silently and marched towards the shop.  She followed him, with a look of smug satisfaction on her face.

Not far behind, a hooded stranger was following them both.

* * *

The Prince watched them go inside the clothing shop across the street from where Bofur had parked the carriage.  He tried to see through the shop window, but all he saw was his lookalike disappearing through a door at the rear of the store.

“Love?” came Bofur’s voice from not far off.  He was trotting towards him with a mug in each hand.  “Why’d you run off?  I thought you said you wanted an ale.”

The Prince took the mugs from him and set them on the ground beside the carriage.  “That can wait.  I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Of course.  Anythin’.”

“I need you to go inside that store and distract the owner.  Ask her lots of questions about the merchandise and keep her occupied that way.”

A playfully curious smile appeared on Bofur’s face.  “What is this?  What have you got planned?”

“You’ll find out in a minute.”

* * *

“Ah, good day to you, Master Dwarf!” Lobelia sang as Bofur stepped into the shop.  “Welcome.  Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Er...Aye, I wanted to see if you had any ties.”

“Ties?  Why yes, of course!  We have a generous selection of ties over here that I can show you…”

The Prince tried to slink in quietly, still keeping his hood up and hoping that he wouldn’t be noticed, or at least that she would assume he was Bofur’s servant and not the other way around.

When she seemed properly distracted, he snuck through the rear door into the workroom, where the young hobbit was busy at a table with a needle and thread and some fabrics.

* * *

Bilbo glanced up from the worktable, assuming at first that it was just Lobelia coming to bark more orders at him.

He looked again when he saw that it wasn’t Lobelia, and said, “I’m sorry, customers aren’t allowed back here.”

He looked a third time, this time getting out of his chair, his jaw lowering and his eyes growing wider and wider as he approached the newcomer, who appeared to be a living mirror image of himself.

The other hobbit lowered the hood of his cloak, revealing one difference at least: his hair was dark brown, unlike Bilbo’s honey-colored curls.

After spending an undetermined amount of time just staring at each other, Bilbo finally managed to speak: “Who are you?”

The cloaked visitor smiled.  “Well...I have a feeling you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”  He nodded at the rear of the workroom, indicating the back door that was open and letting in the fresh air and sunshine.  “Come with me out front and I’ll try to prove it to you.”

He must have sensed Bilbo’s uncertainty, because the next thing he said was, “Don’t worry, she won’t know you’re gone.  My friend is keeping her busy.”

A few moments later, out in front of the store, Bilbo said, “Say, isn’t this one of the carriages from the palace?  The same kind the royal family uses?  Are you…”  Bilbo’s eyes widened.  “Are you…?”

“The Prince, to be exact.  And who might you be?”

“Bilbo.  Bilbo Baggins.”  He decided he’d probably better just believe he was the Prince, and so he bowed.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Your Highness.”

“Likewise, Bilbo,” the Prince said with a kind smile.

“If you’re the Prince...if you don’t mind my asking...what are you doing outside the palace?”

The Prince stifled a small laugh.  “We snuck out.  My servant, Bofur, and I.  I’m savoring a first, and last, taste of freedom before getting married next week.”  His face fell just the slightest bit when he added, “To a total stranger.”

“Oh.  King Thorin, you mean?  Well...at least you don’t have to deal with…”  Bilbo nodded in the direction of the shopfront, and the Prince understood.

“Is that  _ the _ Lobelia’s?” he asked, reading the sign.  “My family has bought clothing from there for years.  Or rather, sent our servants to buy from there, I mean to say.”

Bilbo reached for the Prince and parted the folds of his cloak to see what he was wearing underneath.  “I thought I recognized that jacket.  I made it.”

“Indeed?  This one is my favorite.  I see you’re as good at tailoring as you are at dancing.”

“You saw me dancing?”  Bilbo had never been more flattered in all his life.

“Everythin’ all right, Love?” said the dwarf with braids and a fur hat--Bofur, Bilbo presumed--poking his head out the door of the shop.  Bilbo quickly hid behind the carriage to prevent being seen by Lobelia through the open door.  The Prince waved him over.

Bofur came, and he picked up the two mugs from where they’d been left on the ground.  “You know, we should probably drink these before they go flat.”  Then he saw the identical hobbits standing side by side, and he dropped both mugs in astonishment, spilling their contents all over the pavement.  “How...How is this possible?”

“We were wondering the same thing,” said Bilbo.

“It’s almost like we’re identical twins.  Oh, Bilbo, this is Bofur.  Bofur, Bilbo.”

“Nice to meet you.”  Bilbo shook his hand.  “You’re…”

“A dwarf, aye.  And the Prince’s servant.”

“The best servant I could ask for, and my best friend, too.”

A small, shy smile appeared beneath Bofur’s mustache, and whatever parts of his face weren’t covered by hair turned the slightest shade of pink.

“Have you ever thought about dancing for a living?” the Prince asked Bilbo.

“Well, sure, but...really, what chances do I have?  I’m probably better off staying where I am than dancing in the street for coins.”

“Don’t be too sure.  You’re as good as any of the dancers in the royal court entertainment troupe.  Even better than some, in fact.”

Bilbo was dumbstruck.  What could he say?  Was he really hearing this, from the  _ Prince _ of all people?

“Of course, it will have to wait until the kingdom has its financial affairs in order, but once it has, I’ll send for you.”

“You...You don’t mean that!” Bilbo belted, then cleared his throat in embarrassment.  He didn’t mean to raise his voice.

The Prince merely smiled.  “I do mean it.  There will be a place for you, Bilbo.  I promise.”

Bofur brushed a hand gently along the Prince’s arm.  “We should be headin’ back.  Before someone realizes you’re gone.”

The Prince sighed.  “I wish it didn’t have to end so soon.  But you’re right.”  Turning to Bilbo, he said, “Goodbye for now.  I won’t forget you.”

The hobbits exchanged smiles once more, and then the Prince stepped up into the carriage.

Bofur hoisted himself up to take the reins.  He smiled down at Bilbo, with one more thing to say before they parted company: “You’ll never meet anyone in this world more generous than the Prince of the Shire.  I can attest to that.  And when he makes a promise to you, you can be sure he will keep it.”

Reluctant as he was to believe the good fortune that had found him that day, Bilbo went to sleep that night with more hope in his heart than he could remember ever having.

* * *

The Prince woke from his sleep that night at some unknown hour and gradually realized he wasn’t in his bed.  He wasn’t even in his bedchamber.

He felt the slight chill of the night air on his skin and saw the stars of the night sky above.  He was outside!

He heard two deep, gravelly voices speaking to each other.  One said: “Why’d we have to carry him?  Why couldn’t we take him away in a carriage?”

“A palace carriage on the road at this time of night?” said the other.  “You half-wit, the idea is to  _ not _ attract any attention.  Besides, he’s not even that heavy, so quit your grumbling.”

“I just wish we didn’t have to walk through open country like this.”

The Prince tried to lift his head to look around, to gain his bearings.  He seemed to be lying on some sort of cot or makeshift stretcher being carried by two...hobbits?  No, he reckoned, they were more likely dwarves.

Why was this happening?

It was too dark to see anything.  He must have already been quite far from the palace, and even the edge of town, for those places would have surely given some small amount of light if they were in view, from street torches, lamps in windows, and the like.

“It’s not much farther to the shed.  All we have to do is lock him in the cellar like the master said, and then the rest will take care of itself.”

“Look!  He’s waking up!”

“What?  I thought those sleeping herbs were supposed to last all night!  What do we do?”

“I don’t know.  Should we knock him out?”

That was all the Prince needed to hear.  He swung his legs over one side of the stretcher, hoisted himself off, and hit the ground running, sprinting off into the distant unknown (despite not being able to see anything) with no other objective than to get as far away from his captors as he could before they realized he had gone.


	3. The Turn of the Tide

The King had arrived in the Shire.  The carriage that had transported him all the way from Erebor was approaching the palace gates.  A dwarf named Dwalin, one of the King’s closest comrades, sat at the reins, and Dwalin’s brother, Balin, sat inside of the carriage with the King.

“Are you sure about this, Thorin?” said Balin.  “The very idea of marrying a hobbit…”  He shook his head.  “I just don’t know.”

“We are all the Children of Iluvitar, are we not?” Thorin responded.  “But no, I’m not sure, but not for the reason you mean.”

Thorin removed his crown and handed it to Balin.  “Put this in the box for safekeeping.”

Balin took it and gave him a quizzical look.  “Have you something planned?”

“I have.”

Minutes later, the carriage had passed through the palace gates and the three dwarves were escorted through its halls by one of the Queen’s servants while the pony and carriage were taken to the stables.

Thorin was now only wearing his plain blue tunic, black trousers, and boots that he usually wore under his kingly garb.  He said nothing.

* * *

The Queen sat wringing her hands, her nervousness beginning to spike.

“I just can’t understand it.  Where is my son?  And why wasn’t he at second breakfast?  This is unacceptable.  Look again.”

The Queen’s servant bowed in response and scuttled off.

Moments later one of the doors to the throne room opened and a different servant entered.

“Your Majesty?  Some of the King’s associates have arrived.”

She stood up, smoothed the front of her dress, and folded her hands in front of her.  “Very well.  Show them in.”

The double doors were parted completely and three dwarves were ushered in.  The oldest looking of the three spoke up: “Your Majesty, Queen of the Shire, permit me to introduce myself.  I am Balin, the King’s adviser.”  Then he bowed.  “At your service.  And these are two of the King’s ambassadors.”  They also bowed.

“It is a pleasure to meet you all,” she said.  “The King…?”

“Has been delayed,” said the one with blue eyes and a mane of dark hair as he stepped forward.  “He was summoned to a meeting with some of our kin who reside in the region, and sent us here in his stead.  He will be here in person tomorrow.  He asked me to give this to you.”

The dwarf presented a small box to the Queen, which she opened to reveal a beautiful ring inside.  It had a brilliant blue stone, set in a band of silver.

“An heirloom of the royal family of Durin,” the dwarf said, “and an engagement gift for the Prince, if it would please you.”

“Oh, yes, very much!  And my son--”

“Your Majesty!”  The Queen’s servant returned, waving a piece of paper in the air, followed by two royal guards.  “The Prince has run away!”

“What?  How do you know this?” she demanded.

“This note was left on the desk in his bedchamber.”  He handed the paper to the Queen.  “It says he ran away because he doesn’t want to marry the King.”

“Oh dear!” the Queen said as she read the note, her brow creasing with worry.

“Shall we send out a search party, Your Majesty?” asked one of the guards.

“Yes!  Yes!  At once!”

“This is an outrage!” barked Dwalin.  “The King traveled all this way, at  _ your _ request, only to be insulted like this?  I say we leave right now.”

“My good dwarves,” the Queen pleaded, “you  _ must _ stay.  If only until tomorrow when your King arrives.  I know you must be weary from your journey, and my son cannot have gotten far.  I am sure he will be found in no time at all.  Please, let my servants show you to the rooms we have prepared for you.”

“Very well, Your Majesty,” Balin said calmly, “but if the Prince has not turned up by tomorrow, I think it best that we take our leave.”

* * *

Murmurs of the Prince’s disappearance had spread all around the palace in no time, to the astonishment of just about everyone who heard, but none more than Bofur.  He just couldn’t believe that the Prince would run away.  He’d never been on his own before, nor even left the palace grounds before their little adventure the previous day.  It just didn’t seem like something he would do.

_ Least of all, _ Bofur thought,  _ without even telling me. _

Was it too outrageous to think that he had been kidnapped?  Bofur had one suspect in mind.

Perhaps you could call it conceit, that dwarves tend to think they are better able to tell when other dwarves are guilty of being secretly disloyal, but a number of dubious things that the Queen’s adviser, Onar had said and done in the past had stacked up over the years until Bofur concluded that he was not a dwarf to be trusted.

Onar had been the one to “find” the note on the Prince’s desk, and had handed it off to the Queen’s servant to give to her.  Moreover, while Bofur has hardly the expert analyst, he wasn’t convinced that it was actually the Prince’s handwriting.

But supposing for the moment that the Prince really had run away, where would he go?  He didn’t know anybody.

No, that wasn’t true.  There was the tailor he’d met in town…

* * *

“Back again so soon, Master Dwarf?” Lobelia greeted Bofur with a smile plastered on her face, struggling to hide the lingering irritation at their previous encounter that had not led to him actually buying anything.  “I imagine by now you must have a better idea of what you would like to purchase.”

“Actually,” Bofur said, “I was hopin’ to speak with one of your tailors...Bilbo.”

“Bilbo?!”  Lobelia’s eyes bulged out, as if the very idea that any person would want to speak to Bilbo was positively absurd.

“Yes.  I want to ask him somethin’.”

A moment later, outside of the store, his question was answered by Bilbo’s obvious misperception of why Bofur had come.

“I believed you when you said that the Prince was generous, but I would have never thought that he would send for me so soon!”  Bilbo was brimming with excitement, much as he tried to keep it under control.

Bofur raised a hand, wanting to let him down gently.  “I’m sorry, lad, but that’s not why I’m here.”

Bilbo’s face fell.  “You mean...the Prince didn’t send for me?  You’re not here to take me to the palace?”

“I’m sorry, but no.  I came to ask if you’ve seen the Prince or spoken to him since yesterday, and it’s now clear to me that you haven’t.”  He clicked his teeth and shook his head.  “I just can’t imagine where he would have gone.  He doesn’t know anybody.  And if he didn’t come to you, then he  _ must _ have been taken.”

“Taken?”  Bilbo’s eyes widened with realization.  “Merciful Eru!  You’re saying that...someone has  _ taken _ the Prince?!”

Bofur nodded sadly.  “Aye, so it would seem.  And I would bet a mountain of gold I know who’s behind it.”

“Who?”

“The Queen’s adviser, a dwarf named Onar.  I always knew he was up to no good.  He’s probably tryin’ to have the royal wedding cancelled for some nefarious reason.”  Bofur seemed to be staring off into the distance as if lost in thought, then his eyes widened as an epiphany came to him.  “On second thought, maybe I  _ should _ take you to the palace.”  He looked the hobbit directly in the eye again.  “Bilbo...you and I can stop him.”

“Wait...you and I?”  Bilbo held out his hands in a questioning gesture.  “What can I possibly do?”

“Well...you and the Prince look so much alike.  You could pretend to be him for a short while.”

Bilbo’s eyebrows shot up, and he took a step back and spluttered for a moment before saying, “Are you mad?!  I could  _ never _ do that!”

“Bilbo.”  Bofur held up a hand in a pacifying gesture to try to calm him.

“I would never get away with it!  I would get thrown into prison, or worse!”

“And so would I, but I don’t think it will come to that.  If you can but play the role long enough for me to get to the bottom of Onar’s scheme, then when the real Prince is found and everythin’ comes to light, both he and the Queen will be  _ grateful _ for what you did.”

Bilbo quieted, his eyebrows knitted, staring down at the ground as he gathered his thoughts.

The Prince--his  _ friend _ \--needed his help.  He had been so willing to help Bilbo’s unhappy situation, motivated by nothing but the goodness in his heart, and now Bilbo was being called to do the same.  How could he refuse?

Bilbo looked up at Bofur again.  “He’s really in trouble, isn’t he?”

* * *

Bilbo emerged from the closet in the Prince’s bedchamber wearing the most regal, exquisite outfit he’d ever seen in his life.  It was made of the finest linen in deep crimson, with a vine-like gold embroidery pattern that ran across the shoulders and down the length of the arms and the sides of the trousers as well.  Lobelia would have skinned him alive, had he ever dared to try on one of the finer garments in the store, and those were  _ nothing _ compared to what he had on now.

Bofur stood before him with his arms crossed.  “It’s uncanny.  You look  _ exactly _ like the Prince!”

“Not quite.”  Bilbo pointed to his hair.  “What are we going to do about this?”

“I’ve already thought of that, and I think I may have just the thing for it.”  Bofur reached for a bottle set upon a nearby table and held it up.  “My own secret formula.  Somethin’ I use to get rid of any unwelcome gray hairs creepin’ into my mustache.”

He had Bilbo sit in a chair with a towel around his shoulders and set to work applying a liberal amount of the brown substance to Bilbo’s hair and spreading it thoroughly and evenly with a comb.  He added some other fluids to try to straighten out the curls as best he could, and when he was finished, the hand mirror held in front of Bilbo’s face made even Bilbo almost believe that the Shire Prince had manifested in his very flesh.

“You’ll have to do it again once it starts to fade, of course,” Bofur said.

Now Bilbo could actually walk through the palace halls without having to take care not be seen.  His heart had been pounding the entire time when Bofur was bringing him to the palace in the carriage, and even though he had kept his head ducked down inside and out of sight, he had felt sure that they would be caught.  He had no idea how the dwarf had managed to sneak him up to the Prince’s chamber without any of the guards seeing them, but at any rate, he was here now, and in disguise, but that only solved part of the problem.  Looking like the Prince was one thing.  Convincing anyone that he actually  _ was _ the Prince was another.

A short while later, he stepped timidly into the throne room.  He made sure to keep his shoulders back, stomach in, and head held high as Bofur had instructed, but inside, his heart had gone right back to pounding like a dwarf’s iron hammer.

“My darling!” exclaimed the Queen, rushing to him from her throne.  She put her arms around him, and he stiffly hugged her back.

“I...I’m sorry I ran away...Mother.  I see now that it was the wrong thing to do.”

“Well...I’m glad you came to your senses so soon and weren’t gone long, so I forgive you.  I’m just glad you’re all right.”

“Yes, so good to see mother and son reunited,” said a dwarf standing off to the side, who sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth.  Bilbo looked at the dwarf, who grimaced at him.  Bilbo assumed he must be Onar, from how Bofur had described him.  He agreed with Bofur; one look at the dwarf and you could tell he was up to no good.  Could anyone else sense it?

While the Queen continued to fuss and fret over him, Bilbo regarded the other three dwarves, the ones from Erebor, standing beside the Queen’s throne.  The shorter one with white hair and a white beard looked like he was kind.  One of the two taller ones--the gruff-looking one with tattoos on his bald head--looked like someone you wouldn’t want to make angry.  The other tall one--

Bilbo was immediately captivated by his blue eyes.  He was broad-shouldered and well-built, with a wide stance and a commanding presence; long, dark hair; and a short but full, well-trimmed beard.  At first his expression was stern and serious like the other tall dwarf, but then he smiled at Bilbo.  It was a small smile, but enough to bring a slight crease to his eyes that lent a friendly warmth to his entire face.  Bilbo felt his breath catch.

Never before had he seen anyone so handsome.

“Your Majesty,” came Bofur’s voice from behind him.  Bilbo hadn’t noticed him entering the room, and it wasn’t until then that he realized he’d been staring at the blue-eyed dwarf, not paying attention to anything else.  He looked away shyly.

“Perhaps I should take the Prince to his room so he can rest,” Bofur said.  “I will tend to his needs there.  If it would please you, Your Majesty.  He told me he’s tired.  Didn’t you say that, Your Highness?”

It took Bilbo a moment for his mind to catch up and realize that the title “Your Highness” was intended for him, and then he quickly responded, “Oh!  Yes.  Yes, I did.  I am.”

“Very well,” the Queen said.  She held Bilbo by the shoulders and looked into his eyes.  “Just be ready for tomorrow, my son, for tomorrow is when you will meet the King.”


	4. Memory, Precious and Pure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I should probably mention that this particular version of Thorin is a bit of a departure from the Thorin that people are accustomed to. Basically, there was never any Smaug, no wars, and he is still rather young, but already king. With that in mind, I hope you can appreciate him for all of his softness and warmth.

“So you are the Prince of the Shire,” said the monstrously tall, muscular, hairy man as he poured a huge mug of milk for the Prince, though he didn’t know how he was going to drink all of it, especially after being so full on all of the delicious bread and honey the man had fed him.

“I am,” said the Prince.  “And I thank you for letting me spend the night here.  Once I have returned to my kingdom, I will ensure that you are amply rewarded.”

They had fallen into conversation this morning and finally introduced themselves, after the previous evening’s communication had been limited to the man grunting at the Prince and telling him he could stay.  After spending all day lost, running to and fro across the wild open country and not finding any sign of civilization, nor even a road that might lead somewhere that he could ask somebody for directions, the Prince finally came upon the property of the man, whose name he would later find out was Beorn, right before sunset.  At first he had been terrified at the sight of him chopping wood in the yard, never having seen someone so big before, and wondered if maybe he would have been better off staying with his kidnappers, who were at least closer to his own size.  But Beorn had taken pity on the poor, lost hobbit and given him something to eat and somewhere to sleep, so long as he was the only one, and on the condition that he would leave in the morning after breakfast.

“I don’t want a reward,” Beorn said.  “All I ask is that you don’t tell anybody where I am.  I prefer my seclusion.”

“I will grant you that, but I must also ask one more favor.  Can you tell me how to get back to the Shire?  I still have no idea where I am.”

“I will lend you a pony that will carry you west, if you will promise to set her loose once you reach your destination, so that she may find her way back here to her master.”

* * *

“I hope Your Majesty will forgive me for not revealing myself when I stood before you yesterday.”  Thorin was with the Queen once again, this time wearing his crown and his full kingly attire.

“Pray, don’t mention it,” she said.  “After all, you were understanding of my son’s rash decision to run away.  Perhaps this puts us at equal footing.  What’s more, it seems to me that the two of you had similar impulses at the same time.  You will probably get along well.”

Thorin smiled, not having thought of it in quite that way.  “I will go to him, then.”

* * *

“So I didn’t dream it,” Bilbo said to himself when he woke up in the Prince’s bed.

He had allowed himself to imagine what it would be like coming to the palace for the first time to see the Prince again and dance for the royal family, but he _never_ could have imagined coming to the palace to actually _be_ the Prince.  To say that he was overwhelmed by his new surroundings would be an understatement, especially compared to the environment where he was used to being.

“Don’t get used to _this_ ,” he warned himself.  “Don’t get too comfortable.”

He bathed, dressed, reapplied the dye to his hair like Bofur showed him, and had breakfast served to him: more food than he thought any hobbit needed for one meal.  (How was the Prince not fat?)  Afterward he spent a good while just standing in the Prince’s bedchamber admiring the finery all around him.  At first he felt afraid to touch anything, but then reasoned that the real Prince would be allowed to touch his own belongings all he wanted, and to _not_ touch anything would probably appear more suspicious.

One item in particular caught his attention: a small, wooden box on a shelf, which Bilbo lifted up and set down on a lower table.  When he opened the lid, a little hand-carved, hand-painted figure of a tree rose up and out, with the figures of four small hobbits--two lads and two lasses--twirling and dancing around it to a simple, plunky tune produced from within.

It was a music box!

Bilbo smiled down at it as he watched, admiring its details.  It was most likely made by dwarves, perhaps as a gift for the Prince at some past occasion, he guessed by the expert craft quality put into making it.

The melody it played was familiar.

Then it hit him.  Bilbo blinked back tears as the memories came flooding back of all the times his mother had hummed this exact same tune to him.  He shut his eyes and lifted his arms as if she were right there, holding onto him, and danced around the room the same way they had danced together so many times.  He remembered how he used to stand on her feet when he was very little, until he got older and learned to do the steps on his own.  Always, the same tune she would hum…

Bilbo didn’t know that someone was watching him through the open doorway.

* * *

His presence was requested in the garden.  He could take his time if he wished.

Would the real Prince take his time?  Or would he be prompt, so as to not keep the other person waiting?

Bilbo found that he kept asking himself that same question, over and over again: What would the Prince do?  He began to wonder if perhaps he was overthinking it.  After all, he had gotten the Queen, the Prince’s own mother to believe he was actually her son.  How were some dwarves from another kingdom far away going to know any different?  He had once heard that even the most ill-mannered hobbit was still more agreeable than the most polite dwarf.  He was sure that wasn’t true, but at least it made him feel a little more confident that nothing he could say or do would unsettle the King that greatly.

He also reminded himself that he was only doing this until Bofur found out what happened to the real Prince and brought him back.  The whole thing would be explained, and the dwarves were sure to be understanding--it was one of their own kind who had caused all the trouble in the first place, after all.  Then the King would be introduced to the real Prince, and things would proceed from there.

Bilbo arrived in the garden only to find that no one was there.  Oh, but how many flowers there were!  He had never seen so many in one place.  Some were planted in the ground in beds of their own, some sprouted from bushes and shrubs, and there were a fair number of blossoming trees spread around the expanse of the palace lawn.  He meandered around from flower to flower, smelling each one individually, and then stood in the middle of the stone walkway with his eyes closed, feeling the warm sun on his skin and the fresh breeze, and breathing deeply he allowed his sense of smell to absorb the fragrances of all the flowers combined.

He heard heavy footsteps approaching from the direction of the palace, coming along the stone walkway.  He turned towards the sound and saw the blue-eyed dwarf arriving to meet him.

He tried as best he could to ward off the sudden sensation of butterflies in his stomach.  The least he could do was say hello and try to talk to the dwarf and not be as aloof as he had been the day before.  He would try.

“Greetings and good day to you, my good dwarf.”  He hoped he sounded princely enough.

“And the same to you,” he responded with a warm smile.  Merciful Eru, that smile.

“It’s good to see you again, and of course you are welcome in the garden for as long as you fancy being here, but...aren’t I supposed to be meeting the King today?”

He smiled again.  “You have met him.”

Bilbo’s eyes drifted upward, and when he noticed what was on top of the dwarf’s head, he blushed so hard that he probably could have blended in with one of the roses.

How could he have missed a _crown_ of all things?

“Y…”  He swallowed.  “ _You’re_ King Thorin?”

“I am.”

Bilbo stood as stiff and still as a statue, his eyes wide, throat tight, palms beginning to sweat.  Thorin looked on serenely.

Talking to a king was one thing.  Talking to an intimidatingly handsome dwarf in a situation in which there were no real stakes involved because you could just hide behind your false prince identity, was another.  But for that dwarf to _be_ the King?

The hobbit finally coaxed himself into motion and bowed so low to Thorin that he nearly bent in half.

“It’s a...p-pleasure to meet you...Your Majesty.”

Thorin’s fingers gently brushed along Bilbo’s jaw, meeting his chin to tilt it upward, beckoning the hobbit to stand up straight again.

“Please, call me Thorin.”

“Oh...Very well...Thorin.”

“I am sorry I did not tell you who I was yesterday.  But you must understand…”  He leaned in close and spoke softly, almost at a whisper, as if divulging a secret: “I, too, had misgivings about marrying a stranger.  I just wanted to see you, as a person first, without all of the ceremony that is usually involved.”

The gentle purr of his deep voice and the slight feel of his warm breath on Bilbo’s ear and neck sent shivers down the hobbit’s spine.

Honestly, was he doing this on purpose?

“If you would have me,” Thorin said, straightening up again, “I would very much like to spend some time talking and getting to know each other.  Since we’re here, shall we walk through the garden together?”

* * *

“Those pink ones growing near the bed of clover are called gladiolas.  These multi-colored puffs right here are chrysanthemums, of course.  Oh, and that white one there, that’s jasmine, my favorite.  It smells very nice.”

“You certainly know a lot about flowers.”

Bilbo smiled shyly.  “I know a little about them.”

Most of what he did know was on account of being friends with the florist around the corner from Lobelia’s shop.  Really, he had just chosen a topic and run with it, and flowers simply seemed like the obvious choice.  He was concerned that if he didn’t find something to talk about, they would be left with an awkward silence between them, and he didn’t know which was more likely to give him away: saying too much, or not saying enough.

“Most dwarves do not care for flowers.”

“Oh,” Bilbo said, wondering if that was his cue to be quiet.

“I have never understood why.”

“Oh?”

“Do you know, I never left the mountain until I was near twenty?”

“Really?”

Thorin nodded.  “My mother and father took me on a day trip to the lands outside of Erebor.  I will always remember the moment when the meadow first came into view.  From a distance the wildflowers appeared to my young eyes to be colorful gems gleaming in the sun.  When I ventured closer, I saw at last what they really were, but I thought them no less beautiful.  I began picking and gathering flowers by the armload, joining the different colors together in various combinations until I had filled five baskets that my mother had brought along in our carriage.

“On our way home that evening, she warned me that the flowers would only last a few days.  I didn’t understand what she meant, until she explained that all flowers would wither and die eventually; even ones that were never picked would all be gone with the change of the seasons.  She urged me not to be sad.”

“Were you?”

“A little, but then some time later I got to thinking: Dwarves value precious gems and metals and revere them as gifts left for us by our creator, Mahal, and their radiance never fades.  But flowers, I came to realize, are precious for an entirely different reason.  Their time is finite, their beauty only passing.  Knowing this motivates me to appreciate them in the present.  The same can be said of life.  Consider a comparison to the people of Middle-earth: The elves, the immortal ones, permitted to go on living throughout the ages; and us mortals--dwarves, Men, hobbits--only alive on this earth for a time.  Knowing that this time is limited gives us a reason to cherish every day, to make the most of the time that is given to us.  So who are the lucky ones?  Them, or us?”

Bilbo found himself not knowing what to say.  “What an extraordinary thought,” were about all the words he could summon.

“Thank you for telling me all about the different flowers,” Thorin said with a smile.

“You’re welcome.”  Bilbo wondered if Thorin always smiled this often, or if he was really enjoying Bilbo’s company that much.  Bilbo knew that he was certainly beginning to enjoy Thorin’s company.

Except...it was the Prince’s company Thorin was supposed to be enjoying.  It was the Prince that Thorin would be marrying in a few days.

Thorin’s smile ceased, as though something new had caught his attention.  “Do you hear that?  That music?”

Bilbo listened.  “That must be the orchestra.”  He had heard that they would be in the palace that afternoon to rehearse for the wedding.

Thorin held out his hand for Bilbo.  “Shall we get closer?”

The hobbit looked down at the offered hand, then back up at Thorin.  “Closer?”

“To the music.  So we can hear better.”

“Oh.”  He tentatively placed his hand in Thorin’s and said, “Yes.  Let’s do that.”

He led Bilbo out of the garden and back inside the palace, where they found the orchestra playing in the ballroom.  They stopped when Thorin and Bilbo entered.

“No, please, keep going,” Thorin said.  “In fact, play that last piece again, starting over at the beginning.”

As the musicians once again began playing their instruments, Thorin once again offered his hand to Bilbo.  “Would you like to dance with me?”  There was that heartwarming smile again.

Yes, Bilbo absolutely wanted to dance with Thorin.

“Certainly,” Bilbo responded evenly.

They made their way across the ballroom floor together, dancing a slow but lively type of dance that Bilbo had danced many times before, but never with a partner quite like Thorin.  Was it because he had never danced with a dwarf before?  Had he more time to think about it, he might have been concerned about the big, heavy boots Thorin was wearing while he himself was barefoot (as all other hobbits you’d ever meet would be, opting never to wear shoes on their hair-covered feet), and just one small misstep on Bilbo’s toes would have been quite painful; but he needn’t have worried, as it turned out that Thorin was as light on his feet as Bilbo was.  In fact, Bilbo could hardly tell which one of them was leading because they both moved together so well, complementing each other and mirroring and reacting to each other’s movements in such good harmony, all the while held close together by Thorin’s arm wrapped around the hobbit, his hand supporting the small of Bilbo’s back.  Their closeness made it all the more apparent how much taller than him Thorin was, and if there was any stress caused to his neck muscles by looking up at him, he didn’t notice.  His focus remained on only three things: the music, Thorin’s warmth, and his eyes.  What mesmerizing eyes.  They were like sapphires, or what Bilbo had always imagined sapphires must look like anyway, more dazzling than any of the jewels in the Queen’s crown.

The music ended, far too soon it seemed, and Thorin took a step back and bowed.  “Thank you for the dance.”

Bilbo bowed in return.  “It was my pleasure.”

“You dance beautifully,” Thorin said, taking Bilbo by the hand once again and leading him away from the ballroom and out onto the balcony.

“Thank you,” Bilbo said.  “My mother taught me.  She and I used to dance together all the time.”

“You do not anymore?”

“Well, she--”  Bilbo stopped, and just in time, suddenly remembering who he was supposed to be.  “She’s busy.  But we still find time, every once and again.”

Thorin smiled.

Bilbo felt awful for lying; for deceiving Thorin and pretending to be someone he wasn’t.  Then again, wasn’t that why he was here?  He was doing all of this to help the Prince.  He wondered how much longer this would go on.  He didn’t know how long he could carry on with this facade, and yet he found he was enjoying Thorin’s company so much that a big part of him wished it didn’t have to end.

“Well,” Thorin began, “I think it’s wonderful that--”

“Oh!” Bilbo exclaimed, his attention suddenly torn away by something else, and he moved forward to the edge of the balcony and rested his hands on the stone rail.  “That is the most gorgeous sunset I have ever seen!”

It really was.  From this high vantage point they could see far out to the horizon, past the borders of the Shire into the mountains and the seas beyond.  Thorin joined him by his side once again, taking a few moments to silently appreciate with him the many hues of red and gold, refracting into an uncanny spectrum of colors through thin wisps of clouds, and blending into shades of blue that grew steadily darker the further one’s view travelled from the edge of the earth, higher into the celestial sphere, where a few stars had already begun to appear.

Thorin spoke: “You know, there’s something to be said about someone who never loses their sense of wonder.”

Bilbo looked at Thorin questioningly.

“One might assume, as you are the Prince and have lived here in the palace all your life, that you would have seen hundreds of sunsets from this balcony just like this one, and long since gotten bored with them.  And yet here you are, in awe of the sight, as if you were seeing it for the first time.”

Bilbo silently chided himself for being careless, letting his true colors show and almost giving himself away again.  In truth, neither the window of Lobelia’s shop, nor even the streets outside of it provided the best view for gazing at sunsets.

Thorin smiled warmly.  Affectionately, even.

Bilbo smiled back, then looked away shyly.

“I’m sorry,” Thorin said, never letting his smile falter.  “I’m making you self-conscious, aren’t I?”

Bilbo shook his head.  “It’s all right.  I just...I…”

What could he say?  What would the Prince say?  That was the problem: He didn’t _know_ what the Prince would say.  He only knew what _he_ wanted to say.

Thorin leaned his elbow against the stone rail, propping himself up sideways to look at the hobbit, who continued to stare out at the horizon.

“I was just thinking about something my father once said to me,” Bilbo said.  “What you said about the flowers reminded me.  He once told me to keep my eyes open for all the beauty in the world.  I think I understand better now what he meant.  I guess it seems like the older one gets, the more complicated life becomes, and it’s easy to forget what once made it all worthwhile, and can still make it worthwhile.  But you’ve got to believe that there’s still hope, that change for the better is possible, even if everything always seems to stay the same.  Because without hope, you’ve got nothing left.  And only with an eye for true beauty will you be able to recognize it when something beautiful finally does come into your life, bringing the change you’ve been waiting for.”

Bilbo looked at Thorin.  The Dwarf King’s expression was serious; not stern, just thoughtful, as if he were studying the hobbit.  At last he shook his head and said, “You are not like any royal I have ever met.”

Bilbo felt his heart begin to pound.  Now he’d gone and done it.  He should have known better than to think that the King wouldn’t be able to see through his ruse.

“Is that because I’m a hobbit?” Bilbo ventured, trying to keep his voice steady, hoping he didn’t sound as panicked as he felt.

“No.  At least, I don’t think that’s it.  You’re just...different.  You’re a person first and a prince second.”

 _Or not at all,_ Bilbo thought sullenly.  He exhaled and relaxed a little, though part of him still felt twisted up inside.

Thorin stood up straight again, slowly inching closer to Bilbo’s side.

“It is...quite refreshing, I must say.  Not an unwelcome change.”  He gently laid his hand atop Bilbo’s on the stone rail, and the two of them stood there quietly for a few moments, gazing out into the distance together.

“I am glad I came here,” Thorin said.

Bilbo’s heart was still pounding, but now it was for a different reason.

“I’m glad you came too.”


	5. To the Edge of Night

The Prince returned to the Shire right after sunset.  He felt greatly relieved when he finally saw the palace come into view.

He dismounted the pony when he reached the palace gates, and set her free as he had promised Beorn he would.

“Halt!” called out one of the guards, a surly-looking dwarf.  “Who goes there?”

“It is I, the Prince.  Please, let me in.”

“The Prince?  Ha!  Do you take me for a fool?  I just saw the Prince inside the palace with the King of Erebor.”

“What?  How can that be?”

“I suggest you be on your way,” the guard growled.  “We don’t need any suspicious characters lurking around the palace gates after nightfall.”

“I tell you,  _ I _ am the Prince of the Shire!”

“Enough!  Be gone, before I lose my temper!”

The Prince was on the verge of losing  _ his _ temper, but then he remembered that the guards had bows and arrows.  If they wouldn’t let him in, there was only one place he could think of to go.  He just hoped he remembered how to get there.

After wandering the darkened streets of town for longer than he would have liked, he finally found Lobelia’s Clothing Shop.  Luckily the lights inside were still lit.

“Hello?” he said as he stepped through the front door.  “Bilbo?”

Lobelia emerged from the supply room, her eyes ablaze.  “Where have you been?”

The Prince frowned.  “I beg your pardon?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice you were gone all day?  Do you  _ want _ me to toss you out on your ear?”

“Oh!”  The Prince breathed out a laugh and said, “No, I’m not Bilbo, I’m actually the Prince.”

Lobelia lunged forward, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him into the back room.  “Think you’re funny, do you?  Guess again.  I happen to be close personal friends with the royal family, and you look nothing like the Prince.”

He wrenched his arm free of her grasp.  “My lady, if this is really how you treat your staff, then I will tell my mother not to do business with you any longer.”

“You’re lucky I’m giving you another chance.  I need you and Lotho to make twenty dwarf-sized coats by tomorrow morning.”

A younger hobbit stood beside a half-finished coat draped over a lay figure near the corner of the room and peered at them.  He was holding a measuring tape and a piece of chalk, used to mark all the places where the coat needed to be hemmed.

“I don’t care if it takes you all night,” Lobelia spat.  “And by the way, whatever it is you’ve done with your hair, I absolutely hate it.”

She left the room, slamming the door behind her, and a moment later came the click of a lock.  The Prince tried to rattle it open, to no avail.  He pounded on the door.  “Let me out of here!”  She ignored him.

“Come on, Bilbo,” Lotho said.  “You know how she is.  If we just do what she wants now, she’ll go easy on us later.  She might even give you a full day off a few weeks from now if you’re polite to her.”

The Prince whirled around and marched for the back door, the one leading outside.  It was also locked.  He tried throwing his weight into it, an act he immediately regretted from the throbbing sensation delivered to his arm.

“What are you doing?  You can’t break it down.  It’s made of oak, with an iron lock.”

The Prince stood rubbing his arm, looking around the room and observing that all the windows had bars.  “This is terrible.  Would she really lock us in here all night?  What if we were in danger?  Could anyone even hear us call for help?”

Lotho folded his arms.  “You’re really not Bilbo, are you?”

“No.”  He sighed.  “Oh, well.  I can’t get into the palace, not tonight anyway, and I’ve got nowhere else to go.  How many coats did she say she wanted us to make?”

* * *

“And that one right there,” Bilbo pointed up at the night sky, “is supposed to be a hen pecking the ground.  That bright white star is a piece of corn it’s about to eat.  And then over there next to it is a constellation of a hobbit about to get whacked by his wife with a rolling pin.  See how the three stars make up the hem of her apron, and how she holds the rolling pin up high like a sword?  Well, since those two are so close together, they’re commonly known as the henpeck twins.”

He and Thorin looked at each other straight-faced for a moment before their lips quirked and they finally both broke out in hysterical laughter.

“I don’t remember what any of them are called,” Bilbo admitted, gasping between guffaws once he could almost breathe again.  “I learned once, but I forgot.”

They were out in the garden once again, sitting side by side on the stone bench.

“Oh, Mahal,” said Thorin, wiping his eyes and letting out a couple more belly laughs.  “ _ Where _ do you come  _ up _ with such stories?”

Bilbo shrugged.  “I just think of whatever I think is funny, and then hope that the other person will too.  Nine times out of ten...I’m wrong.”

Thorin laughed again.  “Well...consider me the one silly dwarf who will tell the other nine people that I think  _ they’re _ wrong.”

Bilbo had a sudden memory of a lad who had lived in his neighborhood when he was a tween.  He was the same age as Bilbo, and very handsome--or at least what Bilbo considered handsome at the time--and it occurred to Bilbo that he always tended to act silly around this lad, more given to jest.  He wondered if this was his way of compensating for not being handsome himself (in his view at least, at that age) by having a sense of humor instead, or if it was just a way to try to get the lad’s attention.  It never worked, and the lad’s family eventually moved away.

He regarded Thorin, who looked back at him with laughter still in his eyes.  The dwarf placed his hand softly on Bilbo’s and patted it a few times, then left it there and resumed looking up at the sky.  His hand felt warm and Bilbo hoped he wouldn’t move it.  He didn’t.

The hobbit allowed himself to lean his head against Thorin’s large shoulder, and for a while he wasn’t aware of much.  Soon his ears were graced with the soothing music of a harp, and only when his eyes fluttered open did he realize he had dozed off.  He sniffed and sat up straight again.  The music stopped.

“I’m sorry.  Did I wake you?” said the King.

“It’s all right.  I’m sorry I dozed off.  I was just so...comfortable.”

_ “Don’t get too comfortable,” _ his own words echoed in his head.

He looked curiously at the musical instrument in Thorin’s hands.

“I asked Balin to bring it to me,” Thorin answered the question before it was asked.  “I tried to play softly so as not to wake you.  You looked so peaceful.  Something about the beauty of this night--this whole day, in fact--compelled me to play something equally beautiful.”

“It was lovely,” Bilbo said.  He had recognized the tune, of course.  It was the same one from the music box, the one his mother used to hum.  Apparently that tune was more popular than he thought.

“There is...something you must know,” Thorin said.  “Something I must confess to you.”

The sudden change in the Dwarf King’s tone made Bilbo uneasy.  “What is it?”

“This morning I saw you dancing in your quarters.  You had your eyes closed, and...I didn’t make my presence known because I didn’t want to startle you, nor did I want you to stop.”

“Oh!” Bilbo huffed out a short laugh, suddenly feeling lighter.  “That’s all right.  I do silly things like that sometimes.  I don’t mind that you saw me.”

“In that moment, I had a feeling,” Thorin went on, “something I had never felt before...something I cannot even describe.”

The hobbit couldn’t fathom what had come over Thorin.  He almost seemed...nervous.  No, that was absurd.  A dwarf,  _ the King _ , nervous around him, Bilbo?  Even if he was masquerading as the Prince, the very idea was laughable.

Then again, he  _ did _ seem to be avoiding looking Bilbo in the eye.

“At first I told myself to just ignore it, that it was nothing, just a superstition.  Nevertheless...I couldn’t wait to meet you, to talk with you, to learn all about you...to dance with you.  And when I did, you were everything I expected you would be, and more.”

Bilbo swallowed.

“Every moment of this day has brought me back to that moment...that moment, this morning, when I...I  _ knew _ ...as impractical as it seemed...after all, one cannot simply  _ know _ such things out of the blue...and yet...that feeling…”  Thorin let out a deep chuckle, finally meeting Bilbo’s eye and brightening up again.  “I’m not making any sense, am I?”

Bilbo forced a smile.  “Well...what you said was...nice.”

“Yes, well...shall we head inside for dinner?”

“Dinner?”

“Yes.  We are dining with the Queen, are we not?”

“Oh!  Yes, of course.  Um...you go on ahead.  I’ll catch up in a minute.”

“Very well.”

After a moment of hesitation, Thorin leaned in close and placed a gentle kiss on Bilbo’s soft cheek.  Then he stood up from the stone bench and strode towards the palace, carrying his harp with him.

A warm, prickly sensation spread across Bilbo’s skin, starting where Thorin had kissed him and travelling all over his body.  He waited until he was sure Thorin was out of sight, then he buried his face in his hands.

“What am I doing?” he muttered to himself in frustration.  “I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.”

Talking to himself was not really something he was in the habit of doing, but in this case, he needed to say the words, to hear them said aloud.

“The Prince still hasn’t come back, and I...I think I’m falling in love with the King.”


	6. This Evil Will Grow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo and Thorin are absent from this chapter. Fear not, they'll be back in the next one!
> 
> The focus returns to the Prince, and to Bofur getting to the bottom of Onar's scheme.

“This one is done,” the Prince proudly proclaimed, holding up the coat he had just finished stitching, only to then notice that one of the sleeves was several inches shorter than the other.  He lowered the mangled garment back down onto the worktable in embarrassment.

“Really, Your Highness,” said Lotho, “you don’t have to do this.”

“I can’t let you make all of them by yourself.”

Lotho smiled and shook his head and returned to his sewing.

“I just can’t understand it.  Why do you and Bilbo let her treat you this way?”

“Bilbo doesn’t have much of a choice.”

“But what about you?  Why do you put up with it?”

Lotho shrugged.  “She’s my mother,” he replied without looking up from his work.

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t be your own person.”

“I know.  Really, she’s not that bad most of the time.  And with all due respect, Your Highness,” he added, looking up at him rather matter-of-factly, “one could say the same thing to you.”

The Prince sighed and shook his head.  “It’s not the same thing.  What my mother expects of me is for the good of the whole kingdom.”

At least Bilbo could earn his freedom.  The Prince had to face the fact that he would never have any true freedom, not really.  Even once set free of his current prison and allowed to return to the palace, it would be to hand any possible freedom he had over to King Thorin.  To think that just a few days previous he’d been enjoying himself at the festival with Bofur, just the two of them, free of any cares.

Bofur...How he missed Bofur.

The Prince looked outside and noticed the morning sky growing steadily lighter as dawn approached.

 _Oh, Bofur,_ he thought as he stared longingly out the window with bars that seemed to symbolize his future.   _What I wouldn’t give for one of your hugs right now._

* * *

Sometime around elevenses, Onar stuck his head inside the doorway to the Prince’s bedchamber, checking first to make sure no one was in there, and then he entered, treading gently, looking around for any clue, any telltale sign to confirm what he already suspected.  Unfortunately everything was so neat and tidy, as it always was, that he couldn’t spot anything that might serve as a giveaway.

Then he noticed the almost-empty bottle of Bofur’s hair dye on a table, a peculiar item to find in the Prince’s room.  Next to the table, the closet doors to the Prince’s wardrobe were slightly parted, just a crack.  He opened them completely and glanced around inside.  Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, and he nearly shut them again until he noticed a small bundle on the floor in the corner, which he reached for and picked up to examine.  What he found actually astonished him: a dingy shirt, a ratty pair of trousers, and frayed suspenders.  Why on earth would the Prince possess clothing like this, all worn and tattered?  Especially when the rest of the clothing that hung in his closet was so pristine and immaculate?

Then it hit him, and Onar nearly threw his head back laughing.  It was Bofur, that wretch!  Had he actually, truly brought a peasant imposter into the palace, done him up to look like the Prince, and passed him off as the Queen’s son?  And he was actually getting away with it?  Well, that would change at once.

Only, he needed more proof.

He examined the shirt more closely, taking notice of the tag inside.  Though it was worn out to the point of being nearly illegible, he could just make out the words “Lobelia’s Clothing Shop”.

The name sounded familiar.  A store in town?  Perhaps this Lobelia person would know the imposter’s true identity, if she saw him.  Perhaps she could be persuaded, once reminded of her duty to her Queen as a citizen of the Shire--and promised a handsome reward--to point the accusing finger and expose this outsider for the fraud he really was.

* * *

Onar rounded the corner outside the Prince’s bedchamber and came face to face with Vigg and Vindal.  Before either of them had a chance to so much as inhale, he was grabbing them both around the neck and slamming them against the nearest wall.  “Where have you two been?!  You were supposed to come back yesterday!  I waited around all day for you!!”

“We’re so sorry, Master!” wailed Vigg.

“We tried to find him!” said Vindal.  “But it was like he vanished!”

“What are you talking about?” Onar demanded.  “You--”  Then his eyes grew wide with fury.  “Don’t...don’t tell me...you let him get away?!”

Vigg and Vindal said nothing, just looked at each other in confusion, and then back at Onar.

He growled and tightened his grip on them.  “One of you had better say something,” he hissed through gritted teeth, “if you’re still interested in breathing!”

“Master,” Vindal gasped, treading lightly on the subject and trying to keep his panic under control, “we heard someone say that the Prince spent most of yesterday with King Thorin, and if you were here all day yesterday...shouldn’t you have already known?”

Onar rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.  “Oh, him.  That’s not really the Prince.  At least, I’m almost sure it isn’t.  But if you’re telling me that the real Prince slipped away, then why hasn’t he returned to the palace yet?  Unless...that really is the Prince who spent the day with Thorin?  But it can’t be!  He told the Queen he was sorry for running away.  The real Prince would have told her that he was kidnapped.  So the real Prince must still be out there!”

Onar stopped and listened.  There didn’t seem to be anyone around.  Had someone heard them?

Around a corner, just a few yards away, Bofur shrunk further back behind a marble statue and held his breath.

Onar turned his attention back to Vigg and Vindal.  “I have a new job for you.  Go to the stables and saddle up my pony.”  He leaned in closer, pushing their heads close together so he could whisper into both of their ears: “And hitch another pony to a carriage.  Ride it out of the side entrance and into town, to Lobelia’s Clothing Shop.  I’ll meet you there.”

Some minutes later Onar passed through the front gates at the perimeter of the palace grounds.

“You there,” he said to the guard.  “Has Bofur been through here at all today?  Either coming or going?”

“No, my lord,” said the guard.  “Not today.”

“If he leaves, allow him.  If he tries to come back…”  Onar tossed a gold coin to the guard.  “...do not let him in.  Under any circumstances.”

The guard smirked and placed the coin in a pouch on his belt.  “As you wish, my lord.”

* * *

Bofur had spent the entirety of the previous day observing Onar from a distance, taking care not to be noticed by him.  He needn’t have worried, as Onar had been preoccupied all day with watching Bilbo and Thorin from afar, wringing his hands the entire time.  Whatever diabolical plan Onar was carrying out that involved the Prince’s kidnapping, Bofur was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Presently he followed Onar out of the palace and into the heart of town, again keeping a safe distance.  He had no idea where the sinister dwarf was going, but he intended to find out.  Onar steered his pony this way and that, turning from one street to the next, often briefly disappearing around corners, blocked from Bofur’s view by the shops and other buildings, and Bofur had to spur his own pony to speed up before he completely lost sight of the object of his pursuit.  After experiencing the runaround a few times, it occurred to him that Onar probably _knew_ he was being followed, and was deliberately leading Bofur in circles.

As determined as Bofur was to not give up, he began to worry about his pony getting tired out; but it quickly became clear that it wouldn’t come to that when Onar turned into the market district and immediately vanished into a bustling crowd of hobbits weaving this way and that through a clot of carts, carriages, and plenty of saddled riders.  This type of traffic cluster was to be expected in the market at this time of day.  Onar had come this way on purpose.  How would Bofur catch up to him now?

Lacking any other brilliant ideas, he opted to follow a simple hunch.

* * *

Onar had a hunch of his own, hence his decision to have his lackeys bring a pony and carriage to Lobelia’s shop, and he found them already there when he arrived.  Lobelia greeted him when he entered.

“Have you ever seen anyone who looks like this?” Onar asked, holding up a simple charcoal portrait of the Prince.

Lobelia sneered at the image.  “Is this another one of Bilbo’s pitiful attempts at humor?  They seem to get less and less funny all the time.”

Onar frowned.  “I’m sorry?”

“Yes, I know who that is.  That’s Bilbo.  He’s a tailor, he works for me.  Honestly, he _would_ have somebody draw a picture of him looking like royalty, wouldn’t he.  Shows what a great ego he has.”

 _A tailor?_ Onar thought.   _Interesting._

“Mother!” came a voice from behind the door at the rear of the shop.  “We’ve finished the coats!”

Lobelia excused herself from Onar to go and unlock the door, and a young hobbit opened it and stepped out, followed by...the Prince!

“Onar!”

“Your Highness!”

“ _Your Highness?!_ ” Lobelia snarled in disbelief.  “What?!”

“Finally, someone who knows me,” the Prince managed to say, but Onar was already taking him by the arm and leading him out of the shop.

“I say,” Lobelia threw up her arms, “if a dwarf does not buy something from my store soon, I shall go mad!”

“Thank the Valar,” the Prince said as Onar ushered him to the carriage, perhaps a bit too forcefully.  “Onar, you would not believe the last couple of days I’ve had.”

A feeling of hesitancy came over him when he saw the two dwarves seated at the reins.  Granted, he hadn’t really _seen_ the dwarves who had carried him from the palace in the middle of the night, but still…

“Onar?” he began warily.  “How did you know I was here?”

It was already too late.  The royal adviser was shoving him into the carriage, slamming the door shut and locking him inside.  He quickly righted himself and grabbed hold of the iron bars in the carriage window, wrapping his knuckles around them tightly.  It was no use trying to pry his way out.  He’d been freed from one confinement only to find himself trapped in another.  There really was no freedom for this poor hobbit.

“So _you_ were behind this!”

“Take him to the edge of town,” the treasonous dwarf ordered his subordinates.  “Hurry, before he attracts any attention.”

He gave the pony’s rump a good slap, sending them on their way.  He noticed a white handkerchief on the ground, which had fallen from the Prince’s pocket in the jostle.  He stooped to pick it up, then mounted his own pony and followed after them.

Lotho watched them go from the shop window.

* * *

“Onar, why are you doing this?!” the Prince demanded angrily.

They had left the streets of town and were now travelling the wide dirt road through open country.  Onar rode in step alongside the carriage.

“Why else?  To be king.”

“And just how will _you_ be king?”

“I would have married you, had it not been for that meddlesome Bofur.  Now, once I get both of you out of the way, I will gladly take your mother as my second choice.  She is quite attractive, I must say, for someone her age.”

“NO!  You will NOT marry my mother!  She’ll know what you’ve done!  She’ll figure it out, one way or another!  You won’t get away with this!”

Onar rode forward to speak to Vigg and Vindal.  “Take him into Mirkwood.  Keep going until you reach the forbidden elf kingdom.  Do not stop.  I’m warning both of you, don’t you dare fail me again.”

He circled around and headed back towards the Shire.

* * *

Bofur found Lobelia and Lotho sitting on a bench in front of the shop, enjoying the midday sun and taking tea.

“You again?” She sneered up at him.  “You’re not going to buy anything today either, are you?”

Lotho set his teacup aside and stood up as Bofur dismounted.  “Do you know the Prince?” he asked the dwarf.

“Yes!  Do you know where he is?”

“He was here until a few minutes ago.  He rode away with some dwarves in a carriage.”

“Oh, no!”  Bofur let out a few curse words in Khuzdul.  “Which way did they go?”

“That way.”  Lotho pointed in the opposite direction of the palace.

Little more than a heartbeat later, the sound of galloping hooves could be heard swiftly approaching, and Onar came barrelling down the street towards the palace on his pony, passing so close to Bofur’s own skittish animal that he gave it a good spook and Bofur had to grab the poor thing by the reins and try to calm it down before it ran away.

Had Onar not seen Bofur?  Maybe he didn’t recognize him in his hat, which he only wore outside the palace, never inside.  Or maybe he was simply preoccupied; he certainly seemed to be in a hurry to get back to the palace.

“That was him!” Lotho said.  “The dwarf who came for the Prince!”

Except the Prince wasn’t with him now.  Onar was riding alone.  And where was the carriage?

Bofur would have to let Onar go for the time being.  He didn’t have a choice.  He had to catch up to that carriage!

He mounted his pony, nodded a quick thank you to Lotho, and rode for the edge of town as fast as he could.  As he rounded one final corner that turned onto the street that lay at the borders of the Shire, he hoped he would spot the carriage taking the Prince away along the wide road that stretched out across open country.  They couldn’t have gotten very far, not yet.

Instead he saw _several_ carriages coming _towards_ the kingdom.  Had the Prince’s carriage already passed them?  There looked to be dozens of them, leaving a huge dust cloud trailing behind them making it impossible to see beyond.  Bofur reckoned they must be dwarves arriving for the king’s wedding.

 _Mahal_ , he thought, _another traffic cluster._

* * *

“What of Bofur?” Onar asked the guard when he returned to the palace.

“He left, my lord.  Right after you did.”

“Perfect.  If he returns…”  Onar tossed the guard another gold coin.  “...do not let him enter.  Summon me.”

“As you wish, my lord.”


	7. Broken

Bilbo wandered aimlessly through the palace halls, alone and wretched.  Any servants who happened to pass by would greet him by bowing and saying, “Good day, Your Highness,” and he nodded to them politely in response but was otherwise off in his own fretful world.

Getting too comfortable was one thing, but to actually fall in love with the King?  How utterly foolish.  And yet he had fallen in love with Thorin.  He knew what had to be done.  The Prince would take Bilbo’s place when he got back--or rather, take back his own rightful place--and pick up right where Bilbo had left off.  Everything would proceed as normal, His Highness would be married to Thorin, and Bilbo would just try to forget the whole thing ever happened.

He absolutely hated the thought of it, but it didn’t matter, because he knew that there was no other way.

The only problem was, the Prince _still_ hadn’t returned.  Where was he?  Bofur had told Bilbo to leave that to him and to just worry about playing the part of the Prince.  Now he didn’t know where Bofur was either.

“Is everything all right, my darling?” said the Queen.

Bilbo had been so distracted by his own thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed her coming.  “Oh!  Hello...Mother.  Yes, I’m all right.  Although, now that you ask, have you seen Bofur?”

The Queen gave him a sad-looking smile.  “My dear, I think it is time that you and Bofur began spending less time together.”

“What?”

“After all, you got along just fine without him yesterday, didn’t you?  We have so many other servants.  I know you are fond of Bofur, but you are to be King Thorin’s consort soon, and you know what that entails.”

“Oh!”  Bilbo could have laughed.  “No, you don’t understand…”

“I do understand, and my heart goes out to you, my son.  But right now there are more important matters.  Come, His Majesty has requested that we gather in the throne room.”

* * *

“I have something that I wish to give to you.”  Thorin presented Bilbo with a small, black stone: a smooth, oblong pebble which he placed in the palm of the hobbit’s hand.  “As a symbol of our engagement and a token of my affection for you.”

Bilbo looked at Thorin, then back at the stone.  He held it up higher to get a better look at the etchings carved into it.  They conveyed a message in the ancient Dwarvish language of Khuzdul, which, being a hobbit, Bilbo knew neither how to speak nor read.

“What a thoughtful gift,” said the Queen with a hint of uncertainty.  “However...the ring?”

“Will still be his,” the King assured her.  “I simply wished to present the Prince with something more personal than a family heirloom, which is why I spent the morning making this for him.  It is a stone that carries a promise.”

“A promise?” Bilbo said, his voice little more than a whisper.

“Yes.  A promise that I will always be loyal and true to you, as your husband and your king, if you will but grant the same to me.”

Bilbo felt his throat go dry.

“There is more to it than that, of course,” Thorin went on.  “You see, the Dwarvish word for loyalty is one that does not directly translate into any single word in the common tongue.  Its exact meaning depends on the context.”

Thorin took Bilbo’s hand, the one not holding the stone, in both of his hands and stared down at it.  Here again, the hobbit was astounded at the sight, at the very idea of a king seemingly avoiding meeting his eye, possibly even turning a little pink, whereas a moment ago he sounded perfectly composed and rehearsed.

For Thorin, there was no way to rehearse what was in his heart.

“I have only known you for one day,” Thorin said, running his fingers over the surface of Bilbo’s smooth hand, “and yet it feels like it has been much longer than that.”

Bilbo tried to concentrate on keeping his feet firmly planted, hoping he wouldn’t swoon from the feeling of Thorin’s gentle touch.

“I don’t know where a feeling like that comes from,” Thorin said.  “I just know that I’ve never wanted so strongly to follow a feeling before.  I want to spend the rest of my life following that feeling...learning all there is to know about you...learning to…”  Thorin looked up again, meeting Bilbo’s eyes.  “To love you.  That is the other meaning behind the word for loyalty.  I promise to love you.”

Bilbo sensed that it was his turn to speak.  But what could he say?  How could he promise Thorin the same thing--which he wanted to, with all of his heart he wanted to--when he knew that it could never truly be?

As it turned out, he didn’t have to say anything, because the outcome of the next moment was decided for him.

“Seize him!” Onar shrieked.  “He’s an imposter!”

The dwarf rushed into the throne room, flanked by two guards who each grabbed one of Bilbo’s arms.

“Onar!” yelled the Queen.  “What is the meaning of this?”

“He’s a fake, Your Majesty.  Nothing but a common pauper!”

“Rubbish!  Do you think I don’t know my own son?”

Onar threw a towel over Bilbo’s head and rubbed it vigorously against his scalp, causing the hobbit to let out a startled yelp.

“Take your filthy hands off the Prince, you fiend!” Thorin ordered.  Before the King could advance on him, Onar had already backed away, tossing the dye-stained towel aside.  The Queen stared agape at Bilbo’s mess of honey-gold hair with a few streaks of dark brown remaining.

“Darling…?” she said unbelievingly.

“I only just discovered the truth myself, Your Majesty,” said Onar.  “It was Bofur.  He conspired with this imposter…”

Bilbo shut his eyes tight, feeling like his worst nightmare was coming true.

“Together they kidnapped the Prince and carried him off to Mirkwood, so that _this fraud_ could take his place, marry King Thorin, and take over the Kingdom!”

“No!  He’s lying!”  Bilbo tried to struggle free, but the guards merely tightened their grip on him.

The Queen shook her head.  “I don’t believe it.”

“And yet it is so,” Onar said.  “Where is Bofur now?  Can you think of the last time you saw him?”

“If what you say is true,” Thorin said, “then what proof do you have?”

“Once I discovered this treachery, I tried to rescue the Prince, but I...I was too late.  I am sorry, Your Majesty.”  Onar held forth a handkerchief, one that the Queen immediately recognized as the Prince’s.  He always had it with him.  It was white, with a gold trim and a blue embroidery in the shape of a castle in one corner.

“This was all that was left,” Onar said.

It was covered in spider web.

The Queen took it from him.  “No,” she whispered, looking back and forth between Bilbo and the grubby, sticky object in her hands.  Finally she strode over to him, took hold of one of his arms, and rolled the sleeve up to check his forearm for a birthmark her son had--a birthmark that wasn’t there.

“No!” she wailed, clapping her hand to her mouth.  “No!  It cannot be!”

“All right, so it’s true,” Bilbo began, “I’m not the Prince, but I swear to you, I never did anything to hurt him!”

The Queen burst into tears.  “My son!  My poor son!”

“Take him to the dungeon!” Onar ordered the guards.

“No, wait!” Bilbo protested.  “I can explain!”

He couldn’t bear to look at Thorin.  And yet he _had_ to.

The emotions written on the King’s face were more than the hobbit could handle.  Anger, of course, that was to be expected.  Disgust, revulsion, naturally.  Bilbo knew he deserved both.  But there was more.  Hurt?  Did Thorin’s eyes look shinier than they had a moment ago?  No, it couldn’t be.  Perhaps it was just the lighting of the room…

Bilbo felt like his heart was going to crack in half.

“I’m so sorry, Thorin!  I would never have wanted to lie to you or trick you, not for anything in the world!”

As the guards hustled him out of the room, Bilbo managed to wrench one arm free so he could point an accusing finger at Onar.  “I was just trying to save the Prince--from him!”

“To the dungeon!” Onar repeated.

* * *

The darker it got as night fell, the thicker the forest seemed to become.  When the branches of the trees began to scrape against both sides of the carriage, the Prince realized that it wasn’t an illusion.  The road on which they were travelling through Mirkwood was getting increasingly narrower.  At this rate it seemed like the ominous forest might soon engulf them completely.  But that wasn’t possible...was it?

Then the Prince had an idea.  Even if he couldn’t fit his body between the bars in the carriage window, he could still reach all the way through them with his arms.  If there was anything he could pluck from one of the trees that might be useful to him...well, he wouldn’t know it until he tried.  So try he did, once, twice, then finally succeeded the third time at pulling a pine cone loose from a low-hanging branch as the carriage trundled past.

He regretted not having a lamp inside the carriage, which would have aided his aim, but also because he could have used it to set the pine cone on fire before he threw it.  Wouldn’t that have been fun?

Once again he stuck his arm all the way out the window, pine cone in hand, hoped his aim was true, and threw the pine cone as hard as he could, hoping to hit Vigg or Vindal in the head.  What one pine cone could have done he didn’t know, but as close as the trees were on either side of the carriage, there were infinitely more that he could grab, which would have enabled him to be a great nuisance to his dwarf captors at the very least.  Maybe they would come open the door to try to rough him up and he could escape in the tussle.

Instead the pine cone flew over both of their heads and hit the pony on the back, startling it so that it let out a whinny and took off at a gallop.  Any attempt made by the dwarves to steady the animal must have been futile, because the carriage lurched forward and sped along for about twenty yards before the hitch broke loose just as the carriage came haphazardly over a stone bridge.  One wheel teetered over the edge, and gravity took care of the rest.  The Prince braced himself as the carriage toppled over sideways into the dry stream bed below, effectively breaking one of the doors loose.  Luckily the fall had not been very far, just a few feet. Vigg and Vindal had already jumped from their perch to the surface of the bridge before the carriage had gone over the edge.

Before either of them could collect themselves and try to comprehend what had just happened, the Prince was already off and running through the dark forest.

“He’s getting away!” said Vigg.

“Let him go,” said Vindal.  “I’m not spending all night and day looking for him again.  I’m not a fool.  This is Mirkwood we’re talking about.”

“But the master--”

“We did what the master told us.  Now come on, let’s get the pony and get out of here.”

“What about the Prince?”

“Oh, we needn’t worry about him,” Vindal said with a cruel smirk.  “If the elves don’t get him, the spiders will.”


	8. Something Moves in the Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Prince faces mortal danger, and also makes a few friends.

The Queen sunk into the cushion of her throne and sobbed quietly to herself.  Onar came and stood by her side.

“My deepest and most sincere sympathies, Your Majesty,” he said, placing his hand over his heart.  “For something so tragic to occur at a time such as this…”

She looked up at him miserably, her eyes red, her face tear-stained.

He lowered himself to one knee, moving closer to the throne and placing his elbows on the armrest to meet her eyes at the same level.  Such a gesture might have been endearing if it were someone else, but something indefinably off-putting about Onar just made it seem odd.

“Perhaps I can help ease your troubles.”

“You can’t bring my son back.”

“Too true.  But I can provide a solution to your kingdom’s urgent financial situation.  King Thorin will no doubt return to Erebor after this whole fiasco, but I can assure you that we do not need his help or his gold.  You see, over the years that I have been in your employ, Your Majesty, I have also taken part in many private business ventures in the various neighboring kingdoms, and I have found great success that way.  I have enough gold stored in vaults in the Blue Mountains to last the kingdom several more years.  After that, well...my superb business sense speaks for itself, I should think.  You will never have to worry for the future of the Shire, so long as you leave such matters in my hands.”

The Queen stared at him blankly.

“You will see.  I would not lie to you about such a thing, Your Majesty.”

Much as he was trying to present this revelation as good news, it was no consolation for losing her only son.  There would never be any such consolation.  But it did relieve her of quite a tremendous burden.  For that much she could be grateful, or try to be, at least.

She lowered her eyes and nodded slowly, resigning herself to a reality that could not be ignored.

“Of course,” he added, standing up and walking away from the throne, “there is one small thing I must ask for in return.”

“And what is that?” she said flatly.

He strode over to a glass case set upon a pedestal in one corner of the throne room and pressed his fingertips against it, gazing greedily at the valuable item stored within: the king’s crown.

“Something that you never even use,” Onar uttered wickedly.

* * *

“Help!” the Prince screamed in terror, swinging a fallen tree branch in a mad frenzy at the giant spider that was advancing on him.  It caught the branch in its jaws and bit down on it, reducing it to splinters.  Then it lunged at him.

The Prince was suddenly pinned beneath the horrific creature’s hulking weight; his only defense against it was in gripping the monster’s fangs, holding on for dear life in order to keep its entire assortment of snapping, frothing mouth parts mere inches away from his face.  He couldn’t hold it for long.

Needless to say, he had never been more terrified in his life.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, the Prince couldn’t help noticing eight other figures seemingly appearing out of nowhere.  More spiders?  No!  They were people!   _Dwarves_ , coming to his rescue!

“Pull, lads, pull!” said one of them.

They each had a hold of one of the spider’s legs, and gave a good, hearty tug until the wretched creature’s limbs tore right off, all at once, leaving behind only its head and its now useless body, with foul-smelling goo oozing out of its sides.

A ninth dwarf arrived at the Prince’s side and helped to pull him out from underneath the spider’s carcass and onto his feet again.  He looked to be rather young, with blond hair, a short beard, and a mustache that was twisted into two thin braids.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

The Prince nodded, taking a moment to catch his breath.  “I’m fine.  Thank you so much!  You all saved my life!”

One of the other dwarves came and stood beside the blond one.  He also appeared to be quite young, and though his hair was dark, he bore a slight resemblance to the blond dwarf.  Perhaps they were brothers.

“Who are you?” Asked the dwarf with the dark hair.

“Well...I’m the Prince.  Of the Shire.”

The two young dwarves’ faces lit up.  “You’re a prince?” said the blond dwarf.  “Small world!  So are we!  We’re the princes of Erebor!”

The Hobbit Prince smiled with delight.  “Are you indeed?”

“Indeed we are!  King Thorin is our uncle.  My name’s Fili.”

“And I’m Kili,” interjected the dark-haired brother.

“At your service,” they both said as they bowed to the Prince in unison.  He couldn’t help but chuckle.

A frown of confusion appeared on Kili’s face, and he said, “Wait a minute.  If you’re the Prince of the Shire, then what are you doing way out here?  Aren’t you supposed to be marrying our uncle in a few days?  Or is there another Prince?”

The Prince shook his head.  “No, that’s me.  I’m the only one.”

The other seven dwarves in the group drew closer, but before any more introductions could carry forth, a chorus of creaking bow strings resounded around all of them.  Without warning, the nine dwarves and one hobbit found themselves in an ambush by a dozen or more wood elves pointing deadly arrows at them.

* * *

Bofur had heard the Prince’s cry for help in the distance, and it made his blood run cold.  Immediately he had steered his pony off of the path and in the direction he had heard it, stumbling over large boulders and fallen logs before finally abandoning the poor animal and continuing on foot.  Before calling out for the Prince to gauge his location, he spotted a group some fifty yards away between the trees, standing around the dead carcass of a giant spider.  Were those dwarves?  Was that the Prince?

Were those elves?

The elves wouldn’t kill them, but being captured and locked away wasn’t exactly desirable either.  Bofur considered his next move.  They were outnumbered.  What could one more dwarf do, other than get captured along with them?

* * *

“I’m sorry this has happened, Your Highness,” said the rotund dwarf who had been shoved roughly into the same cell as the Prince by one of the elves.  “It’s a right shame one like you should find yourself in such unfortunate circumstances.”

“And I’m sorry for all of you.  You strayed from the path to help me, and look where it got you.  I’ve heard about how King Thranduil doesn’t tolerate intruders in his region of the woods.  You know...I never asked your name, did I?”

“It’s Bombur.”

The Prince’s jaw fell and he clapped a hand to his forehead.  “You’re Bombur?  Bofur’s brother?”

The dwarf nodded, beaming.

Of course!  How had the Prince not guessed it was him on sight, for all the times that Bofur had told the Prince all about him?  From his wideness around the middle, to his balding pate, to his red hair and beard that were arranged in an impressive, thick braid that looped from one side of his head to the other, he was exactly as Bofur had always described him.

“I’ve heard so much about you!” the Prince exclaimed, taking Bombur’s hand and shaking it emphatically.  “It’s so nice to finally meet you!”

“The same, to you!  My brother thinks the world of you.  He’s written to me about you so many times.”  Bombur’s expression changed, becoming a bit more serious.  “To be honest, I was a little surprised when I heard that you were going to be married to King Thorin.”

“Your Highness?” Said one of the dwarves in the neighboring cell.  “Is it true that the reason you’re marrying Thorin is because your kingdom has run out of gold?”

“That’s Gloin, by the way,” Bombur said helpfully.

“Nice to meet you, Gloin.  And yes, it would seem that our kingdom’s financial security depends on me.  I’m sure your king is very nice, though.”

“It just seems so wrong.  I think of my own dear wife, and how I could never imagine being married to anyone other than the one to whom my heart belongs.  There must be something other than gold that can secure your kingdom’s future.”

“I wish I knew what that was.”

“What about vegetables?” Came a voice from the cell on the opposite side.

The Prince blinked a few times.  “I’m sorry?”

“That’s Dori,” Bombur said.

“Your kingdom has quite an expanse of farmland, does it not?” Dori said.  “And dwarves from all over Middle-earth have begun to hear all about the fresh produce that comes from the Shire.  It’s practically legendary.”

The Prince could hardly believe what he was hearing.  “I was under the impression that dwarves didn’t care for vegetables.”

“You’re the only one who likes green food, Dori,” said a chirrupy voice in the same cell.

“Ori, his younger brother,” Bombur said.  “You’re wrong, Ori.  I’ve found that lots of vegetables go quite well in stews.”

Their conversation was cut short again by the arrival of a tall elf guard herding along another prisoner.  Another dwarf?

He opened the door of the cell that Bombur and the Prince were in and threw the new prisoner inside, shutting it and locking it again before leaving.

“Bofur!” the Prince exclaimed as the dwarf with the all-too familiar hat-braids-mustache combination got to his feet.  Bofur beamed, and the two of them threw their arms around each other and held on in the tightest embrace they had probably ever given each other.

“Oh, Bofur.  Just hold me for a minute.  Please.”

“There, there.  It’s all right, Love.”

When they finally let go, Bofur had another hug for Bombur.

“What are you doin’ way out here, Brother?” Bofur said.  “I thought you and Bifur were up in the Blue Mountains.”

“We were, that is until we departed for Erebor to pay a visit to Nori, only to run into him on the road halfway through the forest, comin’ in the other direction.”

Bombur nodded towards the cell across from theirs, and Bofur and the Prince turned and saw the dwarf standing inside, who the Prince assumed must be Nori.  He had red hair that was styled so that it stuck out in three directions, and he was smiling and waving.  The dark-haired dwarf standing next to him in the cell, with gray streaks in his braided beard and the very obvious ax stuck in his forehead, must have certainly been their cousin Bifur.

“The rest of the lads were with him,” Bombur went on, “all headin’ to the Shire for Thorin’s weddin’.  All except Balin and Dwalin, who are already there with Thorin.  We thought, as long as everyone is together, we would go with them to the Shire, and then we would get to see you, too!  At least...that _was_ the plan until we all got captured by the elves after savin’ the Prince from a spider.”

“I’m so glad they came to your rescue in time!” Bofur said to the Prince, taking his hand.

“And I’m glad you’re with me, Bofur,” the Prince said, “but I hate that now we’re both stuck in here.  How are we ever going to get out?”

“I think I might have an idea,” Bofur said, and he moved forward, putting his face all the way up to the bars of the cell.  “Pssst!  Nori!  Do you still know how to pick a lock?”

“Of course I do,” Nori replied, keeping his voice low but just loud enough to be heard by Bofur.  The gray-haired dwarf in a neighboring cell with a hook nose and an ear trumpet had his face screwed up in concentration, no doubt straining to listen.  The Prince stifled a chuckle at the comical sight.

“That’s Oin,” Bombur said, “Gloin’s brother.”

“Unfortunately,” said Nori, “a certain high-and-mighty older brother of mine _insisted_ that I not bring any hat pins along on this journey.”

The Prince heard grumbling sounds coming from Dori.

“Not to worry,” Bofur said, pulling a pin out from his own fur hat, “I’ve got one right here.”

“Bofur, you beauty!” Fili exclaimed.

“Shh!!” Kili hissed, inside the same cell.  “Do you want one of the guards to hear?”

Bofur reached through the bars and tossed the pin across to Nori, who caught it and immediately set to work on opening the lock.

“How else do you think I keep my hat from ever falling off?” Bofur said, looking back at the Prince and giving him a smile and a wink.


	9. We Will Endure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Prince and Bofur find strength in each other, determined to persevere, and Bilbo faces a choice.

Only when the violent jostling, spinning, and bobbing ceased did the Prince finally find the courage to remove the lid from the barrel in which he was riding and take a look around.  It felt so nice to be out in the open again under the big, blue sky, to be free.  What he hadn’t expected was the sheer enormity of the lake that the river had emptied into and in which they were all now floating.  At least they seemed to be floating towards some sort of town situated on the lake.  That was something.  The other ten barrels containing ten dwarves had spread out quite a bit across the expanse of water, but he could still see all of them, and he counted them off as each of their lids popped off and their riders poked their heads up.

Bofur used his hands to paddle his barrel closer to the Prince’s.  “All right, Love?” he called out to him.

The Prince responded that he was well, smiling and marvelling at the cleverness of his best friend.   _The very idea_ , he thought, _escaping from the Woodland Realm in barrels._ _What sort of things_ won’t _this dwarf think of?_

“Esgaroth,” Bofur said when he was closer, pointing to the town.

“Esgaroth?” the Prince echoed.  He remembered the name of the town, and also Long Lake, from his geography studies.  “So we’re even farther from home, then.”  He couldn’t help but look a little downcast.

“Don’t despair, Love.  We’ll get a ride to Dale which is nearby, and King Bard is sure to help us.  His Men will escort us back to the Shire on gallopin’ horseback, which will take us there much quicker than it took to get here.”

“I hope you’re right.  I just hate to think about what my mother must be going through.  And Onar...that treasonous piece of filth!”

Bofur suddenly remembered: In his eagerness to get to the Prince, he had all but forgotten about Bilbo.  Onar now knew that he was not the real prince, and so too would the Queen and everyone else.  The situation had become quite perilous.

Bofur reached for the Prince’s hand and held on all the way to the docks of Esgaroth.  “You’re alive and unharmed, that’s the main thing.  Onar is _not_ going to win.  We’ll make things right.”

* * *

Could fate really be this cruel?

One day Bilbo Baggins had been just a lowly pauper, just as he had always been every day of his life before that.  The next day he was walking through a dream, finding himself in the most extraordinary of circumstances that somehow led to him being in the presence of the majestic Thorin Oakenshield, King of Erebor, and if _that_ wasn’t enough, actually gaining the King’s affections.  It still didn’t seem real.

But now, his brief glimpse of what pure bliss could feel like if he were actually allowed such things had given way to his present reality: being locked up in a dungeon.  All the years he had spent working hard, hoping to one day be free from Lobelia, maybe even to travel the world and see all that there was to see, had ultimately amounted to nothing.  He would spend the rest of his life staring at stone walls and iron bars, given nothing but bread and water, when the only thing he was guilty of was trying to help.

He sat in the corner of his cell and hugged his legs to his chest, resting his forehead against his knees, and softly hummed his mother’s melody to himself.  It seemed to make sense: his parents had always taught him to make the best of things, and to make do with what little he had.  Now all he had left were his fond memories of them and the times they spent together.

Presently the guard began to snore.   _Good,_ Bilbo thought dryly, _he can serve as my accompaniment._

Bilbo lifted his head.  He had stopped humming.  His eyes grew wide.

The guard was snoring.  He was asleep...and sitting in a chair right next to Bilbo’s cell...with the keys hanging from his belt loop.

It couldn’t really be that easy, could it?

Slowly the hobbit rose to his feet and softly padded over to the door of the cell.  Reaching through the bars as far as he could, his fingertips could almost touch the key ring.  The guard wasn’t close enough.  Even if he were to squeeze his shoulder between the bars to the point that it would almost be painful, how was he going to actually get a grip on the heavy keys without waking the guard?

Bilbo’s eyes scanned the floor inside of the cell, searching frantically for something, anything that might serve as a tool for extending his reach, even if only a few inches so that he could retrieve the keys.  It was no use.  There was nothing but a few stray pieces of straw that had fallen out of the shoddy excuse for a mattress he’d been given.

Then again...if he were to yank some more of that straw out of the mattress and bind it tightly enough together into a rigid rod shape…

The loud clack of a lock being unlatched startled the guard awake with a jerk and a snort, followed by the creaking of a large, heavy door opening as another guard stepped through the dungeon entrance.  This one was taller and more broad-shouldered than the guard on duty, and for some reason was wearing a helmet that covered most of his face.  Only his blue eyes could be seen.

Bilbo felt his pulse begin to flutter.

“The prisoner is to come with me,” the tall guard said shortly.  “Queen’s orders.”

The shorter guard made no protest, he merely yawned and unlocked Bilbo’s cell.

The tall guard removed his helmet once he’d escorted Bilbo out of the dungeon, and of course it was Thorin.  He’d recognized the King’s deep voice, anyway.  He was surprised that Thorin hadn’t already departed for Erebor.

“I guess disguising ourselves as someone we’re not is something you and I have in common,” Bilbo said, then immediately felt stupid for saying it.  But to his surprise, Thorin actually smiled.

“And now I am the one who has done it more than once.”

“Thorin... _Your Majesty_ , I am so sorry…”

Thorin held up one hand to quiet him.  “I am getting you out of here because I believe you are innocent.  It is clear to me that Onar has preyed upon the Queen in her time of grief.  She cannot see that she is being deceived.  Onar has convinced her to marry him...today.”

“What?!  The Queen is marrying _Onar_?!”

Thorin nodded.  “He claims to have a large treasury of his own, and he reasons that the sooner they marry the better, since all the preparations for a wedding this week have already been made anyway.”

“We have to stop him!  You have to take me to the Queen.  I’ll explain everything to her.”

“She may not listen.  Your word against his will not carry much weight in her eyes, and Onar may do worse than imprison you once he becomes king.”

“I know, but still, I have to try.  I’ll just tell her the truth, starting with how I first met the Prince and Bofur.”

“Bofur...I heard about him.  They say that he and the Prince had a clandestine love affair.  Balin even heard some of the servants saying that the Prince may have staged his own demise so that the two of them could run away together, and that Bofur convinced you to take his place in order to buy them time to get far enough away so that no one would ever find them.”

Bilbo found himself momentarily stunned silent.  The idea that his new friends might have only been pretending to be friendly towards him in order to use him for their own personal ends had never even occurred to him.

“But...but you just said that you believed it was Onar, that _he_ was the one who was being deceitful.”

“I do believe that.  I am only telling you what other people have said.”

“No.  No, he...he wouldn’t...the Prince wouldn’t do that.”

“Are you certain?  Didn’t you only just meet him very recently?”

Bilbo frowned up at the King.  “With all due respect, Your Majesty, I only just met _you_ very recently, too.”

Thorin said nothing.

Bilbo clenched his eyes tight and shook his head, feeling stupider by the minute.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t know why I even said that.  That’s completely beside the point.”

“The point is,” Thorin said, “you are innocent.  No matter who is actually guilty of deceit in this instance, you are just a bystander who is being wrongfully punished, and I won’t stand for it.  Why don’t you come with me?  I can get you away from here.  I am a king.  I will make sure you are safe from Onar, and free, able to start a new life somewhere else, in a land far away from this one.”

There was that word again: “free”.  It seemed that fate was throwing Bilbo another twist.

“I...I can’t!”  He nearly screamed the words, then cleared his throat and continued at a more normal level.  “All right, so maybe I don’t know the Prince or Bofur well enough to really know what they would or wouldn’t do, but what if the servants are wrong?  If Onar lied about everything else then he probably lied about the Prince being eaten by spiders, too.  He might be out there somewhere, waiting to be rescued, and that can’t happen unless the Queen orders search parties to be sent out, and _that_ can’t happen if I don’t let her know that there’s still hope.  I just have a...a _feeling_ , all right?”

Bilbo was vaguely aware that his hands were shaking.  He felt his eyes beginning to burn, his breath coming in rasps.

“I know it sounds stupid, and foolish, and yes, I know I’m being stubborn and naive and putting myself at risk, and it probably all comes down to the values my parents taught me, for whatever any of that is worth…”

His voice trembled and broke with emotion.

“...because I would rather believe that a friend is a friend and would never do something so terrible than admit to myself that we live in a cruel world where sometimes people _do_ do awful things to each other, because I don’t want to live in that kind of world, but I _do_ live in that world whether I like it or not…”

Thorin’s arms were wrapped around Bilbo before he knew what was happening, his lips just an inch from Bilbo’s ear, gently shushing him.  Bilbo allowed himself a few moments to sob and shake with his forehead pressed to Thorin’s chest, unseemly as it was, before finally relaxing into his embrace.  Suddenly he felt...safe.  It reminded him of when he was small and his father would hold him tight to comfort him after he had a bad dream.  Only, this was different.  This was more, so much more.

“You are the most remarkable person I have ever met,” Thorin said softly.  He stepped back, but held onto Bilbo’s shoulders so he could look at him at arm’s length.  “And I don’t even know your name!” he laughed.

The hobbit gurgled out a laugh of his own, and wiped away a tear before it could reach the crook of his smile.  “It’s Bilbo.  Bilbo Baggins.”

“As long as there are people like you in the world, Bilbo, it is a world worth living in.”

Bilbo snorted, looking down in embarrassment, then back up.  “That is...very sweet of you to say, Your Majesty.”

“I told you, call me Thorin.”

“Oh.  Sorry.  Thorin.”

“May I kiss you, Bilbo?”

The hobbit felt his face begin to burn.  His eyes were wide open, searching the King’s smiling face, making absolutely sure he wasn’t joking.

“I...you...uh...Yes.  Certainly.”

Thorin leaned down, and Bilbo closed his eyes as their lips pressed together, softly at first, then he lifted himself onto the balls of his feet and hurled his arms around Thorin’s neck to close in on him and deepen the kiss.  Thorin locked him in place with his forearms against Bilbo’s back.  He gently nipped at Bilbo’s bottom lip and lightly licked at it with the tip of his tongue as if requesting an invitation further in.  Bilbo’s lips parted, granting the dwarf access, and for several more moments they carried on tasting each other’s tongues.

Finally Bilbo broke away with a heaving breath and looked Thorin in the eyes again.  “We really should go and find the Queen, you know,” he panted.  He could only imagine how flushed he probably looked.

Thorin nodded, then took the hobbit’s hand as they made their way out of the lower levels of the castle together.  “Don’t worry, Bilbo,” he said, “I won’t let anything happen to you.  I promise.”

Bilbo was sure he was dreaming, still asleep inside that cell on that horrible mattress.  If so, he hoped he would never wake up.


	10. You Have My Love

The servants had their work cut out for them that morning.  They had to scramble to prepare for a wedding that should have been a few days away, now moved to that afternoon.  Guests in attendance--hobbits of the Shire and dwarves from neighboring kingdoms--were puzzled to find a different couple exchanging vows on the palace lawn than the one they had expected.

“Smile, my dear,” Onar said, taking hold of the Queen’s hand at the altar.  “You are about to become my wife.”

“Yes,” she responded, letting her hand rest limply in his.  “To take care of my people.  Your fortune will help them all.”

The ceremony began: “Do you, Onar,” said the cleric, “take Queen Firiel of the Shire to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“Oh, yes.  I do.”

“And do you, Queen Firiel, take this dwarf, Onar, to be your lawfully wedded husband, as well as your new king?”

The Queen seemed to hesitate.  “I...I...”

People sitting in the front row leaned forward to listen.

“I...I say, what is that?”

Onar frowned.  “What is what?”

The Queen pointed at the sky over Onar’s shoulder.  He turned and saw what appeared to be a flock of birds in the distance, far away yet seemingly drawing closer.

Thorin and Bilbo came around the corner of a tall hedge into the wide open section of the palace gardens where the wedding was underway.  Bilbo swatted Thorin’s arm with the back of his hand.  “You didn’t tell me the wedding was happening _right now_!”

“I didn’t know!”

All the guests had turned their attention towards the sky, and a great chatter of voices began:

“Are those eagles?”

“Those _are_ eagles!”

“They’re huge!”

“There are people riding on their backs!”

“There must be a dozen of them!”

“They’re coming this way!”

Most of the hobbits and even some of the dwarves began to scream and flee in a panic as the eagles circled overhead, gradually descending upon the palace gardens.  The first one to bear down spread its claws--heading straight for the altar!

The Queen dove face first to the ground, though she needn’t have worried for herself.  The mighty bird caught Onar in its talons, and he was carried up, up, and away, flailing his limbs and screaming the entire time, until he was far enough away to longer be heard.

One by one the other eagles made their landing on the lawn, dropping their riders off: first Bombur, then Fili and Kili, then Dori and Ori, then Oin, Gloin, Bifur, and Nori.  One eagle landed near the Queen, and the Prince and Bofur slid off its back and rushed to her side to help her up.

“My darling?”

“Yes, Mother,” he smiled.  “It’s me.”

“But...but I thought you were…”

“He’s _fine_ , your majesty.  This is the _real_ Prince.  Look.”  Bofur rolled up the Prince’s sleeve to reveal to her the birthmark on his arm.

“It _is_ you!”

She threw her arms around her son and held on tightly while Bofur and all the others looked on fondly.  When at last she let go, she said, “I don’t understand.  What has happened?”

The eagles all began to take flight, right after one of them dropped off one final passenger: a very tall person, much taller than any of the hobbits or dwarves, with a familiar face and a long, gray beard, wearing a robe and a pointed hat.

“Gandalf?” said the Queen.

The wizard knelt before her on one knee, took her hand, and kissed it.  “It has been too long since last we met, Your Majesty,” he said with a smile.

She smiled back, despite still being very confused.

“You needn’t worry about your adviser,” Gandalf said.  “I’m sure his eagle escort will set him down gently somewhere.”

“Best have the guards pay attention to where,” Bofur suggested, “so they can arrest him.  He won’t be her adviser anymore, not after today.”

“It seems that your son was kidnapped by Onar’s orders,” Gandalf said, “and taken to Mirkwood, but he escaped and made it all the way to Dale.  It was quite a happy coincidence that I was there, meeting with King Bard, and was able to bring him back to you, swiftly and unharmed.”

“Oh, Gandalf, how can I ever repay you?”

“No payment is needed, Your Majesty, and anyway, I am not the only one deserving of your thanks.”  With a sweeping gesture of his arm, he said, “Your son would have been lost had it not been for these dwarves coming to his aid.”

“No one deserves more thanks than Bofur,” Bombur said, stepping forward.  “He’s my brother, Your Majesty, and he loves your son.  He loves him so much.”

“Bombur, please!”  Bofur hissed.  Every word he said was true, of course, but Bofur was just a servant, and he depended on the Queen for his livelihood.  He thought it best not to irk her.  The Prince understood this.

“He’s right, Mother.  We are in love.”

Bofur stared at the Prince in amazement.

The guests who had not fled from the eagles, and even some who had come back, had begun to draw nearer and were now murmuring amongst themselves about the scene unfolding in front of them.

“I am the Prince,” he went on, “which means one day I will be King of the Shire, and I think I should be allowed to choose whomever I want to be my royal consort.  And I choose Bofur.”

He took both of Bofur’s hands in his.  The dwarf looked happy, yet pained.

“But I’m not royal.  I’m just...just Bofur.”

The Prince nodded.  “That’s right.  You’re just Bofur.   _My_ Bofur.  And that’s all I ever want you to be.”

He moved in closer, put his arms around Bofur’s neck, and kissed him.

The guests let out a collective combination of gasps and awws, but the hobbit Prince and his dwarf hardly even noticed.

When the kiss ended, the Prince let out a childish giggle and said, “I’ve wanted to do that for so long.  Your mustache tickles even more than I thought it would.”

Bofur’s smile was radiant.

They pressed their foreheads gently together, and the Prince whispered, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Bofur whispered back.

“My darling,” the Queen said, wearing the same sad-looking smile she had given to Bilbo the day before, “with all my heart I want you to be happy, but how will we take care of our people?”

“I believe I might know a way, Your Majesty,” said a fancy-looking dwarf with intricately braided gray hair and a beard to match.  He bowed.  “Dori is my name, at your service, and I can tell you that dwarves from all over Middle-earth would take quite an interest in the vegetables that grow in your country, should you choose to market and sell them, and would trade generously for them in gold.”

“Vegetables?”

“Certainly!  Everything you have to offer, from carrots to cabbages, to mushrooms, potatoes, sprouts, spinach, broccoli…”

“Let’s not get carried away, now,” said Nori.

“I agree, Your Majesty,” said Thorin, making his way through the crowd with Bilbo as it parted for them.  He let go of the hobbit’s hand and whispered, “Don’t go anywhere.”

Standing before the Queen, he continued: “And I would add that the dwarves of Erebor, in addition to those of the Blue Mountains, would find equal interest in your crop.  You would have trading partners in the East as well as the West.”

“As wonderful as that sounds,” said the Queen, “I don’t see how practical it would be to haul loads of vegetables across such a far distance from the Shire to Erebor.  Would they not spoil along the way, before they even reached their destination?”

“Not if ice was used,” Gandalf spoke up.  “Large blocks of ice cut from the lakes and waterways high up in the Blue Mountains would take a long time to melt, even on the hottest of days.  That would allow plenty of time to haul the crops to Erebor, and the ice would keep it fresh along the way.  Surely the Blue Mountain dwarves would be happy to include ice as well as gold as payment for your produce.”

“Is this a serious business proposal?” the Queen asked.

The dwarves all looked from one to another.  It was clear that none of them saw any reason why it shouldn’t be.

Thorin looked to the Prince, and the two of them regarded each other silently for a few moments.  Finally Thorin said, “It’s amazing.  You look just like him.”

 _And yet you’re not him,_ was the obvious meaning.  The Prince saw Bilbo standing alone in the crowd, looking rather dishevelled after a night spent in the dungeon, with a few lingering streaks of brown remaining in his mess of hair.  Bofur had already told him about everything that the kind, humble hobbit had done to help, of course.

“It’s all right,” he said to the King with a smile.  “I know what it’s like to be in love with someone you’re not supposed to be with.”

Turning to everyone else, he said, “Why don’t we go inside so that we can discuss this business venture further?”  He waved a few of his servants over from the crowd.  “Go and prepare rooms for my friends--Bilbo, Gandalf, and all of these dwarves,” he said loudly enough for all to hear, “so that they can rest.  Draw baths for them and give them food to eat.  It’s the least that they deserve.”

The dwarves welcomed Bilbo into their circle and chattered excitedly amongst themselves.  The Prince turned to Thorin again and said to him privately, “There is one other business proposal I would like to discuss with you, Your Majesty.  One which I think you will find most interesting.”


	11. Ever On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter...

The Prince asked Thorin for an advance payment on the first cartload of crop that would be taken to Erebor and used it to purchase the majority shares of Lobelia’s shop from the bank, effectively buying her out of her own business.  After sending in auditors to investigate her records, he discovered that in trying to compete with the other clothing shops in town, Lobelia had made a number of poor business decisions and as a result the shop was barely staying afloat.  It turned out that she had several creditors of her own, and the only thing that was keeping her from going bankrupt was the free labor she received from her son and from Bilbo.  It seemed that she had been lying to Bilbo for years about just how much his parents had borrowed from her, and with a fair pay rate his work should have already repaid all of their debt to her years prior.  After all this time, it was truly _she_ who owed _him_.

Normally, holding a member of the royal family captive inside of her store overnight would have been enough to land her in prison for life, but the Prince was merciful and kept quiet about it.  Instead, he saw to it that she was locked up for a finite period, hoping she would learn her lesson after years of committing fraud and exploiting Bilbo.

The Prince turned the operation of the shop over to Lotho, on the condition that he pay his staff fairly and treat them well.  Lotho would visit his mother in prison every week.  He’d sit in a chair beside the bars of her cell and they would have tea together, and he’d bring her books to read.  She confessed to him that she didn’t mind being imprisoned as much as she thought she would.  (After a few weeks the rats didn’t even bother her anymore.)  If anything, it felt like a much-needed vacation from all the stress and worry of trying to save her business from shutting down.  Besides, in a few years she would be out, and--she thought--she could go right back to running the shop once she was a free hobbit again.

Lotho had something to say about that, of course.  He found that he liked managing things at the shop himself much better than having his mother boss him around...but they would cross that bridge when they came to it.

* * *

“There is nothing to forgive, Bilbo,” Thorin said.  “You did what you did to help the Prince.  It was nobly done.”

“But I lied to you about who I was.  How can you ever trust me again?”

They were strolling through the garden together, the place where they had first met.  They came upon the stone bench and Thorin sat down, beckoning Bilbo to sit next to him.  He took the hobbit’s small hand in his larger one and they sat quietly together for a few moments before at last he spoke.

“If you promise that you will always be true to me henceforth, as I will promise the same to you, then we will both know that we can always trust one another.”

“It’s a promise, then,” Bilbo said, and the two of them exchanged smiles.

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the birds singing and the soft breeze whispering through the trees, feeling the warm sun on their skin, and watching Bilbo’s pony grazing on the lawn nearby.  Bilbo had ridden a pony before, but never in his life had he actually owned one.  Now, with the money that the Prince had procured for him for all his years of unpaid work--money he was legally entitled to--not only could he afford to buy his own pony, (naming her Myrtle,) his lifelong dream of being able to travel and see all that there was to see across Middle-earth was finally coming true as well.

“Must you really go?” Thorin said softly.

Bilbo stroked the edge of Thorin’s thumb with his, and began hesitantly: “Thorin...the way I feel about you...is like nothing I have ever felt for anyone before.”

He seemed to pause, then leaned his head against Thorin’s shoulder.  As the pause grew in duration, Thorin sensed that it was his turn to speak, and said, “You know I feel the same way about you.  As a king, I can marry whomever I want--provided that the person I wish to marry also wants to marry me, of course.  My consort need not have been born royal.  In truth, I never really believed I would ever find anyone that I would feel that strongly about.  But my people wanted me to marry, so I sought a spouse who would provide Erebor with a beneficial political alliance.  Well, all of that changed when I met you.  Bilbo...if you come with me, to Erebor…”

“I wouldn’t know the first thing about ruling a kingdom, let alone a kingdom of dwarves.  It would be a full-time job for me just learning how.  Thorin, you must understand, for the first time in my life I’m free, no responsibilities.  Thanks to the Prince, I can travel and roam through the lands, just like I always hoped I would be able to do one day.  It was all I thought about for years.  And yet, in just one day, all of that changed.  I found that there was something else I wanted, too.  Some _one_.”  He looked Thorin in the eyes and squeezed his hand.  “And to be honest...that scares me a little.  The thought that one dream that I held close to my heart for so long could so suddenly be rivalled by another dream in such a short time…”

Thorin nodded, his eyes downcast.

“It doesn’t mean I’m choosing this dream over you.  It just means…”

“It means you have waited so long for it that you cannot pass it up.  It’s springtime, soon it will be summer, and you may never get another chance.  I understand, Bilbo, and I see your point as well.  I would not want you to leave one place where you felt trapped only to feel you've become permanently anchored in a new environment.  The way you and I feel about each other, that is how we feel today.  Will we still feel this way a long time from now?”

“I certainly hope so,” Bilbo said, a half smile appearing at the corner of his lips.

They stood up from the bench and faced each other with their hands joined together.

Thorin sighed.  “I wish I could come with you.  But my kingdom awaits my return.”

“I would have you join me in a heartbeat.”  Bilbo let go of Thorin’s hands and reached into his pocket, pulling out the black stone Thorin had given him.

“Keep that,” the King said.  “It was meant for you.  Perhaps I was a bit hasty in declaring my feelings in such a way, but I do not regret that haste.  As I said, the meaning of the words inscribed on the stone depends on the context.  You have my love, my loyalty, my esteem, and no matter what happens, Bilbo, you will always have my friendship.”

Bilbo smiled up at Thorin.  “I will cherish it and think of you every time I look at it.”  He looked down at the stone in his hand, running his fingers over the etchings.  “I just wish I had something to give to you.  Wait!  I know…”

Bilbo ran over to a nearby bush and plucked a single white flower from it, then came back and presented it to Thorin.

“Jasmine!” Thorin said with a grin.  “Your favorite.”  He held it under his nose with his eyes closed and breathed in its fragrance.  “You’re right, it does smell very nice.  And now it is my favorite, too.”

Thorin leaned down and gave Bilbo a tender kiss, which Bilbo returned, reaching up to cup the dwarf’s bearded face in his hands.

“While you are away on your travels,” Thorin said once the kiss had ended, “will you come and visit Erebor?”

“Of course!  You know I will.”

Thorin smiled, twirling the flower in his hand and smelling it some more.  “Then I will look forward to that day.”

Bilbo mounted his pony.  Looking down at the dwarf where he still stood, his lips parted in a fond smile.  “Goodbye, Thorin.  Until we meet again.”

“Safe journey, Bilbo.”

He watched as the hobbit spurred his pony to a trot towards the entrance.  His eyes stayed on Bilbo until he had passed through the palace gates and could be seen no more.

“I’ll miss you,” he whispered, a lump already beginning to form in his throat.

* * *

The joy of freedom was greater than Bilbo could have ever imagined.  Each new day promised new excitement, new sights to see, new people to meet, in some new place even farther away and more exotic than the one he had been to last.  He roamed through the lands of Eriador, Rohan, and Gondor, stopping in towns to learn about the histories of the people there.  Some nights he would spend at inns, other nights camping in the woods.  Often he would meet other travellers and join them around their campfires.  At the inns he tasted all different kinds of food, wine, and ale, and many times he got carried away by the jolly mood of the places and would join the other patrons in song and dance, an action that came to him so naturally that it was hard to believe he’d once spent every evening leaning over a worktable in a drab tailor’s supply room.

He saw scores of beautiful sunsets, and sunrises, too.  He found that the beauty of Middle-earth was at its most accentuated at those times, and he marvelled at how the Valar had made it that way.  He boated on the Anduin river, gawked at the imposing Tower of Isengard, and even visited the Elven realms of Rivendell and Lothlorien.  Meeting Lord Elrond in Rivendell was a privilege he couldn’t wait to brag about, but his favorite features of the Last Homely House were its library, its collection of art pieces and artifacts, and its lovely gardens.  As for Lothlorien, the unearthly experience of being in the presence of Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn was one that defied any mortal’s description.

The realization of Bilbo’s dream could not have been more complete--except in one way.  At every turn of the road, Bilbo found himself wishing he had Thorin with him to share in his experiences.  He would write to him, of course.  He would write back home to the Shire as well, but for every letter he wrote to either Lotho or to the Prince and Bofur, he would write at least two to Thorin.  He wrote to him almost every day, telling him all about the things he had seen and done, always emphasizing that none of it would have meant half as much if he didn’t have Thorin to tell about it.

Bilbo had never seriously considered just how long he would want to go on travelling.  He assumed maybe a year, at least.  Yet after five months he realized he had seen all he wanted to see, and there was only one place left he wished to go: Erebor.

He made his way north, joining a caravan of merchants who were following the Celduin river to Esgaroth and Dale.  He kept to himself most of the way, retreating into his thoughts.  After giving his situation and his relationship to Thorin some consideration, it occurred to him that it must have been Thorin who gave (or perhaps loaned) the Prince the money to buy Lobelia’s business away from her, thus setting Bilbo free, since the Prince would not have had those funds available in the royal treasury at the time.  The idea that Thorin had probably wanted to find out if Bilbo could love him as a person first, rather than view him as a king with the power to save him from his troubles, was not lost on the pensive hobbit.  After all, if all Thorin had wanted was to whisk Bilbo away and marry him, he could have done just that, and neither Lobelia nor any collection agency in the Shire would have had anything to say about it.  And yet he had chosen instead to shell out the money needed for Bilbo to at last gain true freedom, leaving the choice of what to do with his life henceforth entirely up to him.  Looking at it that way, if he wanted to, Bilbo probably could have applied some poetic saying to the situation, along the lines of, “If you truly love something, you must set it free.”  Instead he just felt guilty, feeling that Thorin had granted his greatest desire and he had thanked Thorin by leaving.

Approaching the city of Erebor, Bilbo found a new resolve: just as Thorin had promised his undying friendship, Bilbo would afford the same to Thorin.  If he arrived only to find that Thorin had grown lukewarm over the last few months to the idea of marrying a simple hobbit from the Shire, then he would accept it, and be happy for Thorin for whatever future paths he might choose.

Entering the gates of the city at last, Bilbo was astounded beyond words at the magnificence of the Dwarven kingdom that had been carven into the inside of the mountain over the course of centuries.  With its marble surfaces and many pillars hewn into geometric patterns, accented by every kind of precious gem and metal known to the world catching the light of burning lamps lining its great hallways, it was even more grand than the White City of Minas Tirith in Gondor.  Bilbo felt conspicuous among the mid-afternoon bustle of dwarves, but then felt more at ease when he spotted a familiar smiling dwarf coming his way.

“Balin!”

“Hello, Bilbo!”

“Do you know where Thorin is?  Is he busy?  May I see him?”

“Come with me,” was all the dwarf said.

He led Bilbo to a simple room deep within the palatial halls where he could rest after his travels.  There was a bed, a table, a chair, and a fireplace.  He left Bilbo there and came back a few minutes later carrying a tea tray.  As he set it down on the table, Bilbo noticed there was only one cup, and a small stack of papers placed beside the teapot, as well as a plate of biscuits.

“Thank you, Balin, but aren’t you going to sit and have tea with me?  I would enjoy your company.”

“I would enjoy that too, lad, but I think I will leave you to your reading.”  Balin patted the papers as he said it, giving Bilbo a smile and a wink, then left the room.

They were all letters from Thorin to Bilbo.  He couldn’t believe how many there were.  All of the letters that Bilbo had written to Thorin, he had addressed “To the King of Erebor”, trusting that they would reach their destination well enough, but since he had always been on the move, there was no way for Thorin to write Bilbo back; and yet he had written letters anyway, keeping them with him until he could hand them to Bilbo in person when he finally came to visit Erebor.  There seemed to be a letter from Thorin for every one he’d received from Bilbo.  Had he really written to Thorin so many times over five months?

He read them one after another, smiling at Thorin’s descriptions of goings-on in the kingdom and other cities in the region, appreciating his patient explanations of Dwarven customs and particulars associated with the events he was recounting: things that were everyday to a dwarf but would be foreign to a hobbit.  He asked follow-up questions regarding the things Bilbo had written about, wanting to know more details about the things he’d seen and done on his journey even though he wouldn’t get an answer because he couldn’t send Bilbo any of the letters.  He asked Bilbo questions about himself as they pertained to any topic at hand, wanting to know more about the hobbit as a person.

Most remarkable of all, Bilbo had written a fair amount of sentimental endearments to Thorin, only to later feel a bit self-conscious (and maybe even a little presumptuous) about writing them after the letters had already been sent; but Thorin had responded in kind with quite a few sweet, affectionate words of his own.  Bilbo’s heart swelled when he read them.  Gradually the tea went cold and the plate of biscuits sat uneaten as Bilbo pored over letter after letter, until finally he stood up, unable to tolerate being stuck alone in this room any longer, despite not having gotten through even half of the letters yet.  He bolted out of the door and ran through the halls, looking this way and that, hoping to either find Thorin or someone who knew where he was.

Eventually he found the King near the entrance to the mines, standing with his hands clasped in front of him and addressing a small gathering of citizens, male and female dwarves to whom he was speaking.  It looked as though he’d been out for a casual stroll alone and attracted company, which, judging by his serene expression, he looked quite happy with.

Bilbo smiled at the sight of the handsome dwarf, the kind and gracious King, and ran to him.  Thorin’s face lit up when he saw him coming.

“Bilbo!”

His arms were around Thorin’s neck in a second, pulling him down into a passionate kiss.

The passion of the moment gave way to awkwardness when Bilbo realized just what he was doing, and removed his lips from Thorin’s to look upon the group of dwarves who were staring back at him wide-eyed.  The sight of a halfling from the West snogging their King must have looked very strange, indeed.

Thorin cleared his throat.  “My good dwarves and dwarrowdams,” he said with his hand resting gently against the small of Bilbo’s back while Bilbo faced them, as if on display, “I would like you all to meet Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit from the Shire, and your future royal consort.”

If Bilbo thought their eyes couldn’t get any larger or their jaws drop any lower, he was wrong.

“Uh!  That is…” Thorin amended, turning to Bilbo, “...only if you…”  He cleared his throat again and lowered himself to one knee.  “Bilbo, will you--”

“Yes!  Yes!  Of course!” he said, pulling Thorin up by his elbows to a standing position again so he could draw him into a hug.

They had begun to attract a larger crowd, but all that mattered to Bilbo in that moment was the warmth coming from his dwarf, the warmth he had missed so much, and the feeling it gave him of being right where he belonged.

“I love you, Thorin.”

“And I love you, Bilbo, ghivashel.”

He pulled away so he could look into Thorin’s sparkling blue eyes.  “What does that mean?” he asked with a smile.

“From Khuzdul, it translates into meaning ‘treasure of all treasures’.”

“That’s beautiful.  I can’t wait to learn the rest of the language.”

* * *

The news had spread all across Middle-earth: the Prince of the Shire would be married in the springtime to Bofur, a dwarf from the Blue Mountains with no rank or title.  Once Bilbo and Thorin (recently engaged themselves) heard the news, they immediately made plans to depart from Erebor at the first sign of fair weather.  The question the former pauper wanted to ask the Prince was one he had to ask in person.

Bilbo and Thorin arrived at the palace on a sunny spring day.  When the Prince and Bofur saw them coming, they opted to dispense with royal propriety for a change and ran to their friends to greet both of them with a big hug.

After congratulating his friends on their engagement, and receiving congratulations in return, Bilbo asked his important question:

“Do you mind?  I wouldn’t want to take any attention away from your ceremony, from your special day, if that would trouble you.  If it would, please be honest and tell me so.”

“Do I mind?” said the Prince.  “Do I _mind_?  Bilbo, think about what you are asking me!  Imagine, the Hobbit Prince of the Shire marrying a dwarf, and the Dwarf King of Erebor marrying a hobbit...a historic first for both kingdoms, both happening in the same place, at the same time, and you’re asking me if I mind?  Bilbo...I wouldn’t have it any other way!”

* * *

At last, the happy day arrived.  Hobbits and dwarves from all across the land were invited to attend the royal double wedding, including Thorin’s entire extended family, and every one of Bofur’s relatives as well.  It was fortunate that the palace lawn was so spacious; it seemed that no indoor venue could have accommodated so many.  Even a few Men and elves were in attendance (mostly in the back), and Gandalf, of course.

“I, Prince Felmer of the Shire, take you, Bofur, to be my husband and royal consort…”

“And I, Bofur, take you, Felmer, my Love…”

“I, Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, King of Erebor, take you, Bilbo…”

“And I, Bilbo Baggins, take you, Thorin…”

Everybody cheered when the newlyweds kissed.  Bilbo beamed, and threw his bouquet out into the crowd.  It was Lotho who caught it, winning him a round of applause from everyone around, and a shy smile from the lass standing beside him.

A great feast was held within the palace that evening, with music and dancing, but it didn’t end there.  The celebration was extended all throughout the Shire, and after nightfall all eyes watched in wonder as a colorful assortment of fireworks were set off into the air to explode in the sky high above the castle, ensuring that this joyful day would remain in the collective memories of all the people of Middle-earth, not just as a day of love and bliss for a few, but also as the day that fate decreed that the two kingdoms of the East and the West would be united in friendship for Ages to come.

 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my fic! Please leave comments telling me what you liked about it. :) I would love to hear from you.
> 
> While you're at it, I hope you'll consider reading my other fairy tale fic, [That Voice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8463469/chapters/19389583), and comment on it as well. Even if you're not such a big fan of Nori, I would still love to know what you think of the story and how I've written it. Thanks again!


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